MADAME
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MADAME DE STAËL

HER FRIENDS, AND HER INFLUENCE
IN POLITICS AND LITERATURE.
33649
BY
Charlotte Julia (vor beycan) & ad
LADY BLENNERHASSETT.
WITH A PORTRAIT OF MADAME DE STAËL.
In Three Volumes.
VOL. I.
LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL
Limited.
1889.
PREFACE.
"La première loi d'une portrait est de ne pas le faire dans un ton
opposé à celui du modèle "-SAINTE-BEUVE.
HARDLY any important book of an historical tendency
has been written concerning the period between 1789
and 1815 without bringing in the name of Anne
Germaine Necker, Baronne de Staël-Holstein.
Born on the 22nd April, 1766, in the midst of the
culture of the eighteenth century; brought up under
the direct influence of Jean Jacques Rousseau's ideas,
and in active intercourse with all the celebrated
people of her day, from Voltaire to Mirabeau, from
Turgot to Bonaparte, she never concealed her predi-
lection for them; and in a manner took part in the
whole Revolution. Her share in politics chiefly
occurred in the ten years between 1789 and 1799.
When this period came to an end, her actual literary
career began with her book, On Literature, and only
ceased at her death, which took place on the 14th
July, 1817.
This career is marked by the immense success of
Corinne, by the publication of her book On Germany,
an intellectual feat of importance that can scarcely
be over-estimated; and lastly by the political legacy
VOL. I.
b
vi
PREFACE.
i
she bequeathed, in the Reflections on the French
Revolution, which inspired the flower of the sons of
France with a desire to secure the blessings of
liberty for their country, in attempting which their
predecessors went to their death in 1789-conquered,
but unconvinced.
The life of one whose existence combined all the
vicissitudes of a woman's lot, and whose nature was
endowed with a special capacity for suffering, was
sure to arouse an equal degree of sympathy and
interest.
Thus an essay on Madame de Staël has ever been a
favourite theme with French authors. Men no less
distinguished than M. J. Chénier, Barante, J. de
Maîstre, Thiers, Villemain, Châteaubriand, Lamartine,
Nettement, Nisard, Ch. de Rémusat, Gustave Planche,
Gérusez, Ch. de Mazade, Amiel, Branetière, Caro,
O. Feuillet, Guizot, Taine, failed not, were it but
incidentally, to lower their flag before her.
More detailed studies, taking her for their subject,
have been written by Madame Necker de Saussure,
Benjamin Constant, Alexander Vinet, and above all
by Sainte-Beuve, the master of modern criticism; and
they belong to the most skilled portraiture in French
prose. All these studies are chiefly, however, of a
literary character. The numerous accounts of the
political position and importance of Madame de Staël,
spreading over the literature of the French Revo-
lution, generally lack authenticity, or they are im-
perfectly verified.
PREFACE.
vii
This literature is so voluminous that it is almost
impossible to look through all the memoirs, bio-
graphies, letters, and histories it includes..
And yet the portrait of this wonderful woman
could only be examined in connection with the frame-
work of the current thoughts and events surrounding
her. In the words of one of our greatest historians,
we should rather prefer the repetition of what is
already known to the risk of inaccuracy induced by
an incessant effort to be original.
Owing to the difficulty of separating Madame de
Staël's personal history from that of her surroundings,
the various attempts, especially the English attempts,
to produce an exhaustive and life-like portrait of her,
have utterly failed.
Seventy years have elapsed since her death, and
one of the most important figures in modern times
has hitherto found no adequate biographer.
Whilst in pursuit of entirely different studies, the
authoress of the following work became sensible of
this void in the history of the nineteenth century.
That she should have felt herself constrained to set
these studies aside, in the endeavour to fill up the
deficiency, is amply explained by the wealth of
material, and its connection with so many of the
episodes and leading figures of the Revolution, of the
Empire, the German classical era, the Restoration ;
and finally it is explained by the central figure itself,
which owed its powers of attraction more to its irre-
sistible worth than even to its genius.
viii
PREFACE.
And there was an additional motive.
Madame de Staël saw Germany in the hour of its
deepest political debasement. Undeterred by passing
events, she chose that hour to acquaint the world with
its intellectual worth and renown.
Schiller, and Goethe, Charles Augustus, and the
Duchess Louise, William and Alexander Humboldt,
were her friends, and she was the patroness of A.
W. Schlegel. Grillparzer's Sappho was inspired by
Corinne. Her picture hung above Baron de Stein's
library table, as that of an ally in the struggle against
the oppressor.
Such memories have their responsibilities. Taking
this into consideration, we trust that the story of
Madame de Staël, traced by a German hand, may be
accepted with indulgence as a contribution to the
German literature of the centenary of 1789. No one
more deeply valued all that was good and enduring
in the weighty experiment of that date than she, to
whom liberty was more precious than all other gifts
in life.
Munich.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
The Necker family-James Necker goes to Paris-The Economists
-Necker's attention directed to Public Affairs-His Marriage
-Mademoiselle Curchod under the parental roof—Her visit
to Lausanne-Gibbon, Moultou, and J. J. Rousseau-Made-
moiselle Curchod at Ferney-Goes to Paris-The Neckers'
first friends—Madame Necker's friendship for Buffon-Gibbon
in Paris-Birth of Anne Germaine Necker, April 22, 1766—
Influence of the social atmosphere in Paris upon Madame
Necker-Literary importance of the Necker salon-Madame
Necker a mother to the poor
CHAPTER II.
Necker retires from business-Commencement of the reign of
Louis XIV.-Turgot-Coronation at Rheims-Queen and
Parlement against Turgot Financial necessities of the
French Nation-Necker's appointment - First measures-
Montesquieu-Influence of English ideas-The States-General
First Provincial Assembly - Its usefulness-Necker's
retirement —Franco-American alliance-Antipathy against
England-Dangers of alliance with America-Nature of the
American Constitution-Transition from Liberty to Equality,
from Reform to Revolution.
VOL. I.
C
1
55
X
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER III.
Anne Necker and Bonstetten-First acquaintance- Madame
Necker's Educational System-Gibbon-Mademoiselle Necker
and her Father-Her first literary efforts-Difficulties as to
Marriage-Coppet-Necker inconsolable on loss of position
-Notes from 1783 and 1785-The Swedes in France-Prince
Gustavus becomes King-Count John Axel Fersen-Baron
von Staël-Holstein-Matrimonial negociations-Portrait of
Mademoiselle Necker.
93
CHAPTER IV.
Madame de Staël on Marriage-Baron de Staël's mystical ten-
dencies- The Mesmerists and Illuminati-Morals of the
Clergy-Affair of the Necklace-The Court at Fontainebleau
—Abolition of Slavery-Estrangement between Gustavus III.
and Staël-Figaro-Talleyrand-Influence of the Women-
Rousseau and Hobbes The Bull Unigenitus
Madame
Roland Letters on Rousseau The Nouvelle Héloïse
Rousseau's Morality antagonistic to Christianity
. 149
CHAPTER V.
Calonne-Necker's Book upon Financial Administration-His
Banishment-Loménie de Brienne-May Edicts-Dauphiné
-Necker becomes Minister, Aug. 24, 1788-Victualling of
France during the winter of 1788-1789-Famine and Anarchy
-The French seek a Constitution-Notables again summoned
by Necker-Double representation of the Tiers-Mirabeau—
Sièyes-Barnave-The Elections of 1789
225
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VI.
The États Généraux-Mirabeau and Necker-The king begs
Necker to remain in office-The Estates unite-Gouverneur
Morris―Thomas Jefferson-The Court against Necker-The
king dismisses Necker, July 11, 1789-Impression created
in Paris—14th July-Necker returns to Paris-Letter from
Madame de Staël to Gustavus III --La Fayette and the
National Guard-Talleyrand―The Rights of Man-The Veto
-Mounier-Plans of flight for the Royal family-Banquet of
the Gardes du Corps at Versailles-October days.
xi
PAGE
•
· 305
CHAPTER VII.
France after the October days-Mirabeau-Ministerial Combi-
nations-Close of the year 1789-The three great Political
Problems of 1790-Institution of the Clubs in 1789-Necker
and the Financial Situation-Appropriation of Church Pro-
perty-The Court and Mirabeau-Abolition of Titles-Civil
Constitution of the Clergy-Anniversary of the 14th of July-
The Jacobins-New Issue of Assignats-Death of Mirabeau,
1790-Necker's book upon the Executive
•
399
ERRATA, VOL. I.
Page,
line.
2,
8, for XIV. read XVI.
5 and 16, footnotes, for Jacob read James.
53, 19, for XIV. read XVI.
103, footnote, for Frederick read Frederika.
179, 12, for unequal read unequalled.
224, 14, for on read in.
349, 24, for Toulon read Foulon.
426, 12, for then read than.
428, 5, for XVI. read XIV.
430, footnote, for remarks read" Reflections."
432, 3, for l'âine read l'âiné.
457, headline, for 1790 read 1791.
MADAME DE STAËL.
CHAPTER I.
The Necker family-James Necker goes to Paris-The Economists—
Necker's attention directed to Public Affairs-His marriage-
Mademoiselle Curchod under the parental roof-Her visit to
Lausanne-Gibbon, Moultou, and J. J. Rousseau-Mademoiselle
Curchod at Ferney-Goes to Paris-The Neckers first friends—
Madame Necker's friendship for Buffon-Gibbon in Paris-Birth
of Anne Germaine Necker, April 22, 1766—Influence of the social
atmosphere in Paris upon Madame Necker-Literary import-
ance of the Necker salon-Madame Necker a mother to the poor.
THE excitable and jealous patriotism of the French,
so often serving as an example to other nations, and
not unfrequently as a useful incentive to the exten-
sion of their own strength, has nevertheless been
powerless to prevent the direction of the State from
falling into the hands of foreigners.
In this, the principal share fell to the Italians; to
Concini, under Louis XIII.; and to Cardinal Mazarin,
who added so much to the brilliancy and glory of the
French crown during the next reign, although retain-
ing all the typical attributes of his own nationality.
Berwick, an Englishman, fought the battles of Louis
VOL. I.
7
B
2
MADAME DE STAËL.
1
XIV. The Scotchman, Law, managed the finances
of the Regent. The Revolution accepted help from
Thomas Payne, an Englishman; from Marat, a native
of Neuenburg; from the Prussian Anacharsis Clootz;
from the German Prince of Hessen Rheinfels ; from
Buonaparte, the Corsican. Stofflet, a Suabian, fought
in the cause of the Vendée; and Lückner, a native of
the Upper Palatinate, in that of Louis XIV. The
German element preserved its own individuality less
than any other, on foreign soil, from the field-marshal
Maurice de Saxe down to the author Grimm, in
whose praise it is cited that he had become quite
French. The same cannot be said of his friend and
contemporary, James Necker, the Genevan, who at
a moment of direst need undertook the financial
direction of the affairs of the French government, and
who, ten years later, further undertook to save it from
utter destruction, on the eve of the most dreadful
storm that hitherto had burst upon a European nation.
Necker never entirely lost the traces of his German
origin, dating only a generation back, and it is recog-
nizable in the merits and good qualities as well as in
the failures and mistakes to which the miscarriage in
1789 of this enormous double task must be ascribed.
The Necker family was of Irish descent, and this
is equivalent to saying that they claimed noble blood,
although drawing a line at those royal honours which
float in the fanciful brain of every true Irish Celt, as
a fragment of his stolen birthright.
All traces of the family disappeared from Ireland
THE NECKERS IN SWITZERLAND.
3
in the time of Queen Mary, to appear again in Pome-
rania, where members of it filled offices in the Church.
The son of Martin Necker, a preacher in the parish
of Wartenburg, not far from Pyritz, became an advo-
cate at Küstrin. His son, named Charles Frederic,
born in 1685, soon relinquished a similar narrow line
of existence, although it had originally been his own
choice, and first accompanied a young Count Bern-
storff, a godchild of George I., to the Geneva uni-
versity, subsequently visiting the various capitals of
Europe with him. About the year 1724 he arrived
in London with his pupil, and there the King rewarded
his exertions with a yearly salary of 1007., on con-
dition that he should organize a school at Geneva for
young Englishmen. To this Necker consented, and
shortly afterwards the Grand Council of the university
conferred the honorary title of Professor of Law upon
him. In 1726 he married a sister of Gautier, the Chief
Secretary and a Member of Council, who belonged to
a refugee Huguenot family, tracing its origin through
the Gallatins and Tuderts to Jacques Coeur, the great
financier of the fifteenth century. In the same year
he obtained the privileges of a citizen, and being, as
the decree expressed it, "priceless by reason of his
services," was elected shortly afterwards to the High
Council, became a member of the reformed Consistory
in 1742, and at the same date published a treatise on
the "Constitutional Law of the High Council of the
German Nation," a translation of which appeared
simultaneously in Frankfort and Leipzig in 1764.
B 2
4
MADAME DE STAËL.
Although Necker had specially notified that the
pamphlet contained" nothing that could be displeasing
to princes," the High Council of the Republic thought
it wiser to decline the dedication, in consideration of
its monarchical surroundings. It nevertheless assured
the author of its special goodwill.
The proceeds of his school enabled him to become
possessed of a country-place, to which he gave the
name of "Germanie " in memory of his native land.
He appears to have taken no small interest in the
welfare of his adopted country, and it was whilst
endeavouring to calm the excitement arising out of
an election in the church of St. Peter's, then disturbed
by violent disputes, that in 1762 he suddenly fell
lifeless to the ground.* He had reached the age of
seventy-seven years, and left two sons behind him,
Louis and James.
Louis Necker, the elder of the two, born in 1730,
and doctor of law, originally followed the same path
as his father had done. He first accompanied one of
the counts of Lippe Detmold to the university of
Turin, was afterwards tutor to the Baron von Was-
senaër, of an old Netherland family, and went with
him in that capacity to the Utrecht university.
Being appointed professor of natural history in the
university of his native town, he busied himself with
* Senebier, Histoire Littéraire de Genève, 1786, iii. 90. Galiffe,
Notice Généalogiques sur les Familles Genevoises, ii. and iv. Dr. J.
Hermann, Oberlehrer, Zur Geschichte der Familie Necker, Berlin,
1886.
JAMES AND LOUIS NECKER.
5
several works for the Encyclopædia, and carried on his
father's school, but after his first wife's death found
himself obliged to leave Geneva, in consequence of
some legal disputes. He gave up his professorship,
and went to Marseilles, where he assumed the surname
of de Germanie, and with the help of his brother,
James Necker, started a banking business, which in a
few years enabled him to retire into private life, and
go back to Paris with two million livres. There,
through their common love of physical science, he
became the friend of Benjamin Franklin, and there
also he married a Mademoiselle de Hauteville.
This second marriage proved childless, but a son of
the first marriage entered the French army, and a
daughter married and settled in Geneva, where in
1804, and in the same year as his brother, Louis
Necker died.*
A
very different career, comprising all the changes
and chances of human greatness, and their inevitable
disappointments, was allotted to James Necker, born
September 30th, 1732, the younger son of Frederic
Charles.
Victor de Bonstetten, his friend in later years,
speaks of a characteristic trait in his early youth in
Geneva, which was otherwise undistinguished by any
special event. It had been related to him, that when
young Necker played with his companions he always
* The Necker Family, by Cr, and Jacob Necker, by A. W.
Schlegel. Both notices printed in the newspaper The Contemporaries.
1816-1817 and 1818-1819.
6
MADAME DE STAËL.
managed that the forms of government of which he
had read should be represented in miniature, and
thus he obtained an opportunity of framing laws for
them.*
In the Switzerland of that date young and old
busied themselves with politics; and the various can-
tons each represented various forms of government, and
of political theories in miniature. This appears all
the more surprising when we remember the apathy
prevalent throughout the length and breadth of Ger-
many, their next-door neighbour. This was so com-
plete, that in 4700 letters-interchanged from 1722-
1756 between the Gottscheds and half the rest of the
world-politics with the exception of one or two
casual allusions are barely mentioned.† Notwith-
standing the almost universal interest taken by the
Swiss in public affairs, the second half of the
eighteenth century was a period of decadence in the
history of Switzerland. A number of small states
divided the land, from the monarchy of the Prince
Bishops down to the absolute democracy of the small
cantons in the mountains; but the aristocracy, never-
theless, prevailed in public life; whilst even the
democracy in the small cantons did not hesitate to
have their dependants.
Besides the thirteen cantons, there were three
smaller communities, represented in the Diet by the
name of the united towns. Amongst these, the
* Bonstetten, Letters to Frederike Brun, published by Matthison,
† Danzel, Gottsched and his Times, p. 279.
i. 205.
GENEVA.
7
republic of Geneva enjoyed the most flourishing
industrial development; whilst
whilst the aristocratic
families in Berne, Lucerne, Freiburg, Solothurn, were
already in a state of decline.
In 1760 the Swiss secured themselves an intellectual
centre by the formation of the Helvetic society on the
occasion of the Jubilee of the Basle university. At
its head came Iselin, with Geszner, Hirzel, and Schinz,
from Zurich; later on they were joined by Bodmer,
Lavater, Pestalozzi, and Bonstetten.
Encouragement of patriotism and civil virtue, as
well as the furtherance of the public welfare, was their
ostensible aim; politics were insensibly added as the
times grew stormier. In like manner Geneva took
up a special position from an intellectual stand-point.
The historian J. von Müller calls it "comparatively
the most enlightened town to be met with far and
wide."
"After a long servitude," he
" he says,
"Calvin intro-
duced the shadow of political freedom by the powerful
rule of the Protestant clergy, and succeeding genera-
tions brought it still further to perfection. Envied by
more than one neighbour, this town was an immense
industrial centre, and that of a comparatively immense
concourse of intellectual people; but when the joys of
liberty are the most talked about they are the nearer
being lost." "Never is a native of Geneva put to con-
fusion," he adds, "by giving his opinion."
In his Reminiscences Bonstetten confirms this state-
* J. von Müller, Letters. Complete Works, xvi. 42, 55,
8
MADAME DE STAËL.
<
ment. He tells us that so much was never written for
and against aristocracy and democracy in any place
as in Geneva. He says, "Aristocracy was in the
constitution and in the position of the town, democracy
in some of its customs. The whole power of the aris-
tocracy was united in the Little Council,' and all
the patrician families lived on the hilly portion of the
town, whilst the plebeians lived at their feet in the
lower town. And yet there was no recognised difference
of classes; no real boundaries divided the reigning
families from their subordinates. A purely ideal con-
ception of power existed; it therefore came to pass that
in no country were the smallest rights more tenaciously
adhered to than in this republic. One of these ima-
ginary rights was that of living on the hill. How often
I was annoyed by the slighting remarks applied by
the inhabitants of the upper town to the residents in
the lower town, in whose houses I had occasionally
danced.
"This universal jealousy produced universal culture
in every class. The women were amiable, the men
well-educated, even learned, and education was alto-
gether more advanced than in any of the greater
nations.
"As the unusual intellectual cultivation in Geneva
from ancient civil and religious controversy,
sprang
and from a commercial spirit, the character of the
Genevese was altogether serious, and more disposed
for calculations and accounts than for enjoyment and
merriment.
GENEVA.
9
"Voltaire says of Geneva, 'Cité sournoise, où jamais
l'on ne rit.' The puritanical spirit of the clergy had
banished all amusement, especially public plays, from
their midst, as doubtful abominations. The serious
nature of the Genevese made them all the more
vigorous in a dispute, so that even the most in-
significant political question produced a storm of
words and pamphlets.
"I remember that the greatest praise that could be
bestowed in the days of my childhood was commenda-
tion for good behaviour. To be well-behaved, meant
keeping as quiet as an old grandfather or as stiff as a
councillor. My father had recommended me to the
notice of Cramer, an excellent man, and then Syndic
of the Republic. I saw him first in his kitchen, dining
with his wife and servant-girl. The venerable old
man wore a wig, too, which reached his stomach like
a splendid mane. These good manners thawed by
degrees, like ancient glaciers, at the time of Voltaire's
appearance, and he was not entirely innocent of bring-
ing about this result."* The owner of Ferney sub-
sequently boasted that he had corrupted Geneva ; †
but in the days of Necker's youth Bonnet, the great
and modest natural philosopher and savant, who tried
to find a middle path between the philosophical pro-
blems of the day and the Christian faith, in the same
way as Necker afterwards endeavoured to do, was the
most influential man in his native town. Whilst suc-
* Bonstetten, Reminiscences of Youth.
† Voltaire to d'Alembert, i. 134.
10
MADAME DE STAËL.
cessfully pursuing his studies in the atmosphere of
patriarchal simplicity and austerity peculiar to Geneva,
James Necker, in compliance with his father's wish,
was obliged, at the age of sixteen, to give up the uni-
versity, and went to Paris, there to make his livelihood
in mercantile pursuits.
It has been rightly observed that this interruption
left a permanent gap in his education.*
At first he
seemed unlikely to succeed. Far other matters than
those connected with money claimed young Necker's
interest; he loved his books, eagerly read all the
leading literature of the day, and in his leisure
moments wrote short pieces for the theatre, more
especially comedies in verse, which later on he con-
gratulated himself he had never published.
A mere chance led to the discovery that this merry
young fellow, full of jokes and play, was nevertheless
possessed of very special talent for the calling he so
unwillingly pursued.
His father had placed him with Vernet, the Genevese
banker, with whom he stood in friendly relations.
The head of the bank lived in the neighbourhood of
Paris, and only attended on certain days. During
his absence an important business offer came from
Holland. Decision was urgent; Necker, who was now
eighteen years old, undertook the transaction, and on
Vernet's return unfolded not only a carefully-pre-
pared, but a suitable, scheme, to which he gave his
entire approval.
* Madame de Charrière, Lettres, Mémoires. Revue Suisse, p. 777.
JAMES NECKER GOES TO PARIS.
11
In the following three months his clerk had learnt
Dutch, and thus all the management of important
business with the great Dutch commercial houses
passed into his hands.
His fortune was made, and when Vernet retired
from business in 1762 he entrusted a sum of money
to James Necker, which enabled him, in partnership
with the Genevan Thélusson, to found a bank, which
very soon became the most important in France, and
made a new departure in banking. This firm did not
adhere to mere mercantile transactions or to the ma-
nagement of the State revenues, as hitherto had been
customary, but struck out an independent line of its
own and undertook important monetary operations.
Speculation in corn was its first opportunity. The
corn trade had been freed in 1764 by Choiseul, and
this economic revolution was the result of the interest
awakened, towards the middle of the century, in every-
thing connected with domestic economy. It found
expression in the economic literature started between
1750 and 1760, and aroused the same passionate dis-
cussions as a short time previously could only have
been effected by religious discussions."
"The nation," wrote Voltaire, "wearied of verses,
tragedies, comedies, operas, romances, novels, moral
reflections still more romantic than the above, and
theological disputes upon Grace and the Convulsion-
naires, began to turn its attention to grain, and even
to neglect renown in order to talk of nothing but
corn and wheat."
12
MADAME DE STAËL.
If we compare these remarks with the testimony of
the current literature, and the course of events in the
capital, they can scarcely be considered exaggerated.
For even at Versailles, in the heart of the monarchy,
under the king's roof, the Marquise de Pompadour
busied herself in advancing the theories of her old
doctor Quesnay, the founder of the physiocratic system.
Latour had already painted her with a volume of
L'Esprit des Lois in her hand.
In the epigraph that he places at the beginning of
his famous book,* Pauvres paysans, pauvre roy-
aume; pauvre royaume, pauvre roi, he pleads for his
favourite idea the alliance of an absolute monarchy
with the peasant classes, which, if rightly understood,
might have given another turn to the history of the
century, and, notwithstanding Quesnay's apparent
defence of despotism, might have extended to personal
liberty, by means of the security of property.†
Whilst the elder Mirabeau, recognizing his own
future ideal in this union between the sceptre and the
plough, sought to adapt Quesnay's theories to his own
class, and aspired to a nobility that should live on its
own property, renounce all luxury, give itself up to
the landed interest, prove itself determined to up-
hold religion, and its duty to its home and country,
Gournay accomplished for commerce and trade what
Quesnay and his friends had undertaken for agri-
* Maximes genérales du Gouvernement économique d'un royaume
agricole, 1760.
† Lavergne, Les Économistes Français au xviii siècle.
THE LEADING BOOKS OF THE DAY.
13
culture. He introduced the celebrated axioms "Laissez
faire," "Laissez passer,
passer,” into the administrative
methods of his day, and the term "Bureaucratie"
was also coined by Gournay.* His influence and
Quesnay's extended far beyond the borders of France,
whilst the physiocratic theories and system of govern-
ing by the laws of nature were adopted by the most
enlightened men of the day and of the most varied
nationalities, amongst whom were numbered the Grand
Duke Leopold of Tuscany, afterwards Emperor, the
Margrave Charles Frederick of Baden, the Chancellor
Chreptowicz, and, in some degree, Joseph II. himself.
In Paris, which set the fashion, the economists owed
their success in a great measure to the protection and
influence of women. Although the authors who ex-
pounded the theories of the "Sect," as it was called,
were dull and almost unintelligible, their ponderous
writings nevertheless described the direction of the
current opinion, and won the active support of the
educated world. The heaviest farming questions were
discussed in elegant boudoirs; the Duchess d'Enville,
mother of the distinguished Duc de la Rochefoucauld,
a victim of the Revolution, was reputed one of the best
authorities on these subjects; in their favour Madame
d'Epinay forgot her love affairs; irreconcilable quarrels
were put aside for discussions on the elder Mirabeau's
L'ami des hommes, or Quesnay's Maximes. The
Grimm et Diderot, Correspondance Littéraire, Philosophique, et
Critique, adressée à un Souverain d'Allemagne. Paris, 1830. Première
partie, iv. 146. New edition by M. Tourneux. Paris, 1885.
14
MADAME DE STAËL.
Dauphin, father to Louis XVI., called the first-named
work "The breviary of honest people," and, in the
firm theories of the old nobleman, found something of
the exalted spirit of reformation which had pervaded
Fénélon's attitude to his grandfather, the Marcellus
of his dynasty.
On the other hand, Melchior Grimm, who belonged
to the philosophical party, jokingly called the Philo-
sophie Rurale (Mirabeau's last work, which had
appeared in 1763) the "Pentateuch of the Economists,"
and, with consummate ability, the Abbé Galliani, who,
after Voltaire, was the cleverest and wittiest man of
the day, undertook to discuss the exaggerations and
extreme views of the physiocrats, with their boundless
theories as to free trade in corn, and made China the
scene of action in an imaginary sketch of their ideal
of an agricultural state in his Dialogues sur les blés,
which were esteemed equal to the Lettres des Pro-
vinces by the enthusiasts of the time.
Galliani's book embraces the whole of the period
we are now considering, and is, therefore, more than
any other, worthy of notice as encouraging the dis-
cussions and free criticism of many subjects beyond
the purely economic question.
Even in 1729 “Freedom and inviolability of pro-
perty," wrote Voltaire, who had returned from Eng-
land, "this is the device of the English, and it is just
as good as 'Mont-joye' and 'Saint Denis.""
Other glances than his had since been directed across
the channel, and one work succeeded another during
NECKER'S ATTENTION TURNED TO PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 15
the following twenty years, shattering the decaying
foundations of the old kingdom. In 1748 Montesquieu
led the way with L'Esprit des Lois.
The essay
Sur les mœurs followed in 1756. The year 1762
brought the double gift of the Contrat Social and of
Emile.
Meanwhile the Encyclopædists arrayed their power-
ful artillery against the existing state of things. Diderot,
the very genius of revolution, promulgated all its doc-
trines. Wherever a spark of it was to be found those
ideas were bound to be set alight, and, attracting or
repelling, to set the whole spiritual atmosphere in
commotion, whilst the outward calm did but increase
the inward ferment.
It has been remarked, that, although Necker had
shown no inclination for his calling, circumstances sub-
sequently counteracted this, and fortune so favoured
him that when barely thirty-three years of age he had
secured what in those days was a very considerable
fortune, amounting to several millions.
His outward circumstances being thus free from
anxiety, his thoughts again turned to the plans and
aspirations of his youth. On reaching manhood he
aspired to exchange the counting-house for the outer
world, and possess things more precious to him than
riches and material comfort.
Fortune had still further favoured him in the fact
that the experience gained in his commercial life
proved the best preparation for the sphere of his sub-
sequent labours.
16
MADAME DE STAËL.
At the age of thirty-two Necker met and married
Mademoiselle Susanne Curchod, and to this he not
only owed the happiness but the dignity of his life.
This lady made herself an independent name in the
society of the eighteenth century, but her best claim
to be remembered by posterity is that she was the
loving, yielding, unselfish wife of a distinguished man.*
Stirred perhaps by the memory of his own expe-
riences, Goethe asserts in his Dichtung u. Wahrheit,
that no more beautiful theme for a modern idyll can
be found than in the home of a country clergyman.
The home in which Pastor Curchod's daughter began
her existence on the 2nd of June, 1737, answered
to this description, not so much from its poetical
surroundings as from its high moral standard.
Her modest whitewashed home, with its green
shutters, stood in the Pays de Vaud, close to the
borders of France, in the small parish of Crassy,
where her father was minister. Her mother traced her
decent to a banished Huguenot family, the d'Alberts
of Montélimart. She had been very beautiful in
her youth, and these traditions of noble descent
seem later on to have induced her daughter when in
Paris to take her mother's name for a short time
instead of her own.† Susanne had no brothers or
sisters, and the Pasteur Curchod could therefore
* The Necker Family, by Cr. Jacob Necker, by A. W. Schlegel,
vol. i. and iv. or the Contemporaries. Notice sur M. Necker, par le
Baron de Staël, son petit-fils. Madame de Staël, Vie privée de M.
Necker. Euvres Complètes, xvii. 1.
† D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, i. 11.
MADEMOISELLE CURCHOD.
17
devote his whole fatherly care to his one daughter.
When barely sixteen she wrote a Latin letter to one
of his friends, who praises her style as Ciceronian ;
she studied physics and geometry, cultivated music,
and described herself as a slight blonde girl, with
merry blue eyes, refined features, and a winning
smile, but as betraying her modest village origin in
her appearance.
This attractive personality failed not to find ad-
mirers. The pulpit in the small church at Crassy
soon attained a popularity amongst the young theo-
logians not altogether due to their anxiety for the
spiritual welfare of the community in that village.
Letters from friends are extant reproaching her for
having encouraged the young men by her coquetry;
she herself confessed afterwards that she had been
too inexperienced to display the necessary worldly
wisdom, and further that the commendation lavished
upon her had turned her head.
The feelings she inspired found expression in verse;
one lover makes moan over
"Votre eternelle morale
Qui me fut toujours si fatale;
to another she appears in a dream;
"Ne vous alarmez pas, Suzette,
Vous grondâtes, l'amour se tut,
Mon sommeil aima sa conquête,
Et mon reveil votre vertu ”
is the concluding stanza of one of the best specimens
perpetrated by her poetical adorers.
VOL. I.
C
18
MADAME DE STAËL.
The memorable episodes in the youth of Susanne
Curchod did not however take place in her early
years at Crassy, but in Lausanne, where her parents
used to take her as often as circumstances allowed.
D'Haussonville has given us an ample account of
the style of social amusement prevalent in the old
imperial town known to us chiefly as the resort of
tourists in the present day. Although reduced to
9,000 inhabitants, the society of Lausanne had never-
theless separated itself into two groups, which only
met from time to time. One was represented by the
old aristocratic families, whose interests gravitated to
the seat of government at Berne, and who led a
patriarchal existence of quiet hospitality on the shores
of their beautiful lake, but at times condescended to
mix with the people, and to take its share in their
pleasures. The other set was made up by the pro-
fessors and students of the university, and was joined
by a number of young girls calling themselves La
Société du Printemps, and these amused themselves
in winter with dancing and parties, and in summer
with excursions and games.
The advent of Mademoiselle Curchod, and the
reputation of her great talent, gave rise to the institu-
tion of an Academy which took its name from the
wells of La Poudrière near the town, and imposed
literary essays with the tenderest problems of the
heart for their subject.
At one time the members of the Academy would
busy themselves in asserting woman's right of posses-
GIBBON.
19
sion "over the hearts of men-which might be com-
pared like the New World to fallow, uncultivated
land." On another occasion, to the question "What
gives greater pleasure than anything else?" they
unanimously answered "Making an unhappy person
entirely happy, without being forced in any way to
do so by outward circumstances."
In all these subtilties in the taste, or rather in the
absence of taste, belonging to that time, Susanne Cur-
chod took the liveliest share; and here again she
was lauded, worshipped, adored, either as Sappho or
Suzette, and reproached with the fact that she liked
it all. In any case her nature gave no sign of the
strong pedantry of her later years. About this time
a young foreigner made his appearance in Lausanne,
and joined in all this amusement and philandering
with love. He appeared much struck by the young
girl, and succeeded in exciting a reciprocal interest in
her heart, an interest that entwines itself around the
memory of the historian of the Decline and Fall, like
the ivy on a time-honoured edifice.
Gibbon was sent by his father to the pastor Pavillard,
in Lausanne, at the age of sixteen, in hopes that he
might be induced to recant from the Catholic faith,
which, guided by a noble hand," he had embraced
at Oxford a short time previously.*
“
The cure proved only too successful; with his
ecclesiastical creed Gibbon lost all Christian belief,
* A passage from the writings of Bossuet had persuaded him to
take this step. Memoirs of my Life and Writings, chap. iii.
c 2
20
MADAME DE STAËL.
and thus metamorphosed, at the age of eighteen, he
first met Mademoiselle Curchod.
Later on, his external appearance gave rise to many
good stories-for Gibbon became a shapeless, fat,
little man, with short legs, and an utter absence of
profile.* A certain M. de Bièvre used to say that
when he required exercise he walked three times
round Gibbon. Further it is known, that, when
again in Lausanne, he sank on his knees to make a
declaration to the authoress Crousaz (afterwards
Baroness Montolieu), and was quite unable to comply
with her request that he would get up and say no
more on the subject. "Ah! if I only could," groaned
the unfortunate Gibbon, and a servant had to be
called in to assist him to his legs again. This was
more than a quarter of a century later; Mademoiselle
Curchod knew a different Gibbon, before he had
attained his renown, but possessed of all the attraction
of youth. She speaks of his beautiful hair, his dis-
tinction and charming manners, and lays stress upon
the clever and ever-varying expression of his coun-
tenance.
In his own incisive style Gibbon has immortalized
the portrait of the young girl. He thus writes, "The
personal attractions of Mademoiselle Curchod were em-
bellished by the virtues and talents of her mind, and
in her short visits to some relations in Lausanne her
wit, beauty, and erudition commanded the universal
* Marquise du Deffand, Letters to Horace Walpole.
† Duchess d'Abrantes, Histoire des Salons de Paris, ii. 365.
AN UNHAPPY LOVE-AFFAIR.
21
appreciation of those around her. The report of such
a prodigy awakened my curiosity. I saw and loved.
I found her learned without pedantry, lively in
conversation, pure in sentiment and elegant in
manners, and the first sudden emotion was fortified
by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar
acquaintance.
"She permitted me to make her two or three visits
at her father's house. I spent a few happy days in
the mountains of Burgundy,* and her parents honour-
ably encouraged the connection.
“In a calm retirement the gay vanity of youth no
longer fluttered in her bosom; she listened to the
voice of truth and passion, and I might presume to
hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous
heart.
"At Crassy and at Lausanne I indulged my dreams
of felicity, but on my return to England I soon dis-
covered that my father would not hear of this strange
alliance, and that without his consent I was myself
destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle I
yielded to my fate."
Then follows the classical sentence," I sighed as a
lover, I obeyed as a son. My wound was insensibly
healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life.
My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the
tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself, and
my love subsided into friendship and esteem.Ӡ
* As d'Haussonville remarks, he is mistaken.
Swiss territory.
† Gibbon, Memoirs of my Life and Writings, chap. iv.
Crassy was on
22
MADAME DE STAËL.
1
Chance so ordained that when Mademoiselle Cur-
chod's great-grandchild examined the archives at
Coppet he came upon fresh proof of the small love-
affair, described in these measured terms, and naturally
drew a rather different conclusion from the discoloured
letters of young Gibbon; for Susanne Curchod's love
was the deeper of the two, and endured long after his
had
grown cold.
D'Haussonville published several letters written by
Gibbon to the young girl in the first flush of awakened
interest.
In them he compares himself, because separated
from her, to an oriental prince suddenly imprisoned
in the darkness of a dungeon-to Adam driven out of
Paradise. After spending a few weeks in pastor
Curchod's home, he speaks of the treasures of the
beautiful mind he found there, to which the possession
of a kingdom or even philosophy was not to be com-
pared.
Just as Socrates thanked the gods that he had been
born a Greek, so in the same way Gibbon
Gibbon gave thanks
that he had become acquainted with this best and most
enchanting of beings.
He was so much in love that Julia de Bondeli,
Rousseau's and Wieland's friend, tells us that Gibbon
was met near Lausanne with a naked dagger in his
hand, stopping the country people, and demanding of
them at the point of the dagger whether a more beau-
tiful or loveable creature existed than Mademoiselle
Curchod of Crassy.*
*Bodemann, Julie von Bondeli, pp. 217-218.
AN UNHAPPY LOVE-AFFAIR.
23
The young girl was at that time actually engaged
to him, but not without many doubts and fears, which
he tried vainly to calm, as to the durability of his
faith.
When she learnt that his father was opposed to
their union, Gibbon never again entirely succeeded
in quieting the heart he had conquered. But Susanne
Curchod was far from thinking that their engagement
would be broken off, when in the spring of 1758
the young man's father summoned him back to
England.*
In the course of the next four years almost the only
sign Gibbon made to the neglected girl, to whom he
was engaged, and whom he had left behind in the
Swiss mountains, was the despatch to her of an essay
on the study of literature with a formal dedication to
herself.
Her father had meanwhile breathed his last, and
she had gone to Geneva, where she supported herself
and her mother by giving lessons. According to local
tradition, she used to ride about the neighbourhood
to her pupils, and sometimes lecture or distribute
prizes to them from a small pulpit of twigs and moss.†
She was universally respected, was considered un-
usually cultivated, and carried on a correspondence
upon the literary topics of the day; amongst other
subjects she and Julie Bondeli discussed the Nou-
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, i. 39-55.
† Sainte-Beuve, Madame Necker, Causeries de Lundi, iv. 240.
24
MADAME DE STAËL.
velle Héloïse.* She frequently looked back with
pleasure to this period, for although her means were
limited, and her future undecided, she still had many
happy hours, which, in the days of her prosperity,
she sought in vain to recall.†
But this chapter of her life was destined to be brief.
Three years after the death of her father she lost her
mother, and in her deep distress she reproached her-
self for impatience and indifference to her during the
last days of her life. This exaggerated self-reproach
was due to the burden of trouble and the trials which
had so sorely taxed her strength, for in the meanwhile
the engagement to Gibbon, which she still considered
binding, had come to an end.
The pen, at that time so famous, found no better
phrase whereby to break this to her than the well-
known formula of our school-days.
"Mademoiselle, I hardly know how to begin;
and yet it must be," he continued. "You will already
guess what I have to say to you. Spare me from
further detail; yes, I must give you up for ever! The
fiat has gone forth; my heart grieves over it, but
everything must give way to duty. When I reached
England inclination and interest alike advised me to
win back my father's affection and to disperse the
clouds which had estranged it from me for a time. I
flatter myself that I have succeeded in this. His whole
* Bodemann, Julie von Bondeli. Two letters to Susanne Curchod
in Geneva, 1761.
† Golowkin, Lettres recueillies en Suisse.
AN UNHAPPY LOVE-AFFAIR.
25
attitude, the tenderest attention, the most especial
kindness, convince me of it. At one moment, when
he assured me that my happiness occupied his every
thought, I took advantage of the opportunity and
begged that he would permit me to marry the girl by
whose side, under any sky or in any land, my life
would be equally happy, and without whom they would
all alike be distasteful to me.
"This was his answer: 'Marry your foreign girl;
you are independent; but remember, before you do
it, that you are the son of an Englishman.' He en-
larged upon the subject of deserting him and bringing
his
grey hairs
hairs prematurely to the grave; upon the
cowardice of trampling down all the duties I owed to
my country. I withdrew to my chamber and remained
there two hours; I will not attempt to describe my
position to you; I left it to tell my father that I would
sacrifice the happiness of my life to him. May you,
mademoiselle, be happier than I can ever hope to be.
I shall always pray for this, and find consolation in
it. Would that my wishes might accomplish it! I
tremble to hear of your fate, and yet do not leave me
in ignorance of it. Pray assure M. and Madame
Curchod of my respect and my grief. I shall always
remember Mdle. Curchod as the best and most delight-
ful of women; may she not utterly forget the man
who did not deserve the despair which has come upon
him. Farewell!-This letter must appear strange to
you in every sense. It is the true representation of
my mind.
Twice I wrote to you, on the way to
26
MADAME DE STAËL.
England from a village in Lorraine, from Maestricht,
and finally from London. You never received my
letters. I do not know whether I should hope that
this letter will reach your hands. And this, Made-
moiselle, is why I have the honour to remain, with
remembrances which are the torment of my life, and
with respect which nothing can alter,
"Your sincere and obedient servant,
"GIBBON.
"Beriton, Aug. 24, 1762."
Gibbon's descriptions of his life in England during
the year
after his return from Switzerland do not in
the least correspond with the passion contained in this
letter, affected though it may be. They depict a life
spent amidst cheerful and pleasant occupations, giving
itself up more and more to serious study and wide
literary designs, in which love and sad recollections
certainly played a very subordinate part, if, indeed,
any part at all.
In like manner Susanne Curchod had apparently
schooled herself to accept a fate to which she had
become accustomed, with resignation, and without ill-
will towards the man who had brought it upon her,
when suddenly, in the following May, 1763, the news
reached her that Gibbon had returned to Lausanne.
It seems never to have entered into his head that
this unexpected return might deeply move the poor
girl. Then he received the following letter, dated
from Geneva, in which her long pent-up feelings at
length break forth.
AN UNHAPPY LOVE-AFFAIR.
27
"SIR.-I, myself, blush at the step I am now ven-
turing to take; I would fain hide it even from myself
and from you. Great Heaven! is it possible that an
innocent heart can thus abase itself? What humilia-
tion! I have had sharper suffering, but have never
felt it so deeply as now. I owe it to my peace of
mind to take this step. If I lose this chance, peace
can never again be possible for me. Can I enjoy any
such, whilst my self-tormenting heart mistakes the
indications of your increasing indifference towards me
for the signs of affection? During five long years I
have sacrificed myself to this chimera with singular
and incomprehensible constancy; but at last my too
romantic nature has awakened from its self-deception,
and I beg you on my knees to enlighten this foolish
heart. Confirm your entire indifference, and my
spirit will know how to submit. Certainty will restore
that peace for which I sigh.
for which I sigh. You would be the most
despicable of men did you refuse to answer me
frankly, and God, who knows my heart, this God, who
without doubt loves me although He has tried me so
terribly, will punish you if, heedless of my prayer,
there should be the least dissimulation in your
answer, or should your silence make sport of my peace.
If ever you should make this undignified step of mine
known to a single creature, were it even to your best
friend, the bitterness of my punishment would be in
proportion to my error. I should then regard it as a
crime the extent of which I had not taken into con-
sideration in all its horror.
28
MADAME DE STAËL.
"I already feel how greatly my former reserve and
my present sentiments are violated by this abasement
of my maidenly pride."
The fact that this letter, addressed to "Mr. Gibbon,
English nobleman at M. de Mezeray's in Lausanne,"
was found with its black seal broken, in the house at
Coppet, leads to the conclusion that it is the original
which he had returned to her. The sender of it after-
wards added at the end of it, "A thinking soul is
punishment enough, and every thought draws blood."
Although Gibbon's feelings were not influenced by
this outbreak of her burdened heart, the verdict of
posterity certainly was. Madame Necker's portrait
gained not a little, in womanly grace and human
sympathy, by assimilation with that of Susanne
Curchod.
A second letter he received from Geneva, written
in a very different tone, in acknowledgment of his
answer, leaves very little doubt as to its contents,
although they are unknown to us.
The young girl had by this time mastered her feel-
ings, and writes:-
"Five years of separation could not work the
change which now has suddenly taken place within
me. It might have been well that you had spoken
earlier, or in a different strain to me. Do not, how-
ever, grieve over my fate. My parents are dead, and
what do I care for outward prosperity? Not to you
did I sacrifice my existence, but to an ideal being,
who could only exist in such a romantic head as mine
AN UNHAPPY LOVE-AFFAIR.
29
was ever wont to be; from the position of the only
man I ever could have loved, you at once fell back,
on receipt of the letter that opened my eyes, to the rank
of an ordinary mortal, and I now have become more
indifferent to you than to any other, as you cease to
resemble the sentimental swain of my dreams.
"It now lies with you to offer compensation.
"Follow the plan you propose to me, add your
regard to that of the rest of my friends, and you will
receive an equal share of my friendship and confidence.
Believe that these words do not proceed from any
bitterness, but from a wish to help you; my conduct
and feelings have deserved your respect, and your
friendship; I count on both. In the future there must
be no further allusion to our past relations, and I will
close them with a few necessary remarks.
"Since the losses I have had, this neighbourhood
has become unbearable to me, and friends who are
ready to help me recommend me to leave it. I cannot
accept their offers without humiliation, and I cannot
refuse them without hurting their feelings.
"I had thought of going to England, whence I
had had a situation offered me, but the information I
gathered as to the position of a lady companion, and
the customs of the country, is so conflicting, that I
still hesitate between going there and accepting a
place at one of the German courts. You could help
me to a decision. I depend as much upon your judg-
ment as upon your taste.
"At the time your book appeared I put one or two
30
MADAME DE STAËL.
ideas on paper which had been suggested by it. I
venture to send you these as the first proofs of my
friendship; it will not be my fault if I do not give
you others; I desire to assure you of this verbally
when you come to Geneva, and justify the praises I
have there lavished upon you.
"I hear that various English people are betaking
themselves to Motiers from Paris.
If this is your
reason for coming to my country, and you should
wish for a letter to Rousseau, I must beg you to let
me know, as my best friends are most intimate with
him. I should be really indebted to you if you
would put my admiration of your talents to the test.”
Amongst the friends she mentions in this letter
was one whose feelings for Mademoiselle Curchod
had gone through another stage, but without meeting
any encouragement. Later on, whilst still mindful
of her, he asserts that he had always loved, and always
should love her, even were he never permitted to add
to her happiness. This was the Pastor Moultou, *
so well known to all readers of J. J. Rousseau's Con-
fessions. He had been married, a short time before,
to a friend of Susanne Curchod's youth, and thus was
in a position to offer her the hospitality of his roof,
under pretext of requiring her assistance in organising
his new household.
He did not allow her outwardly calm appearance
to deceive him, but, on the contrary, made a last
effort in favour of the unhappy attachment, which he
knew she had not relinquished.
* Aimé Steinlen, Charles Victor de Bonstetten, p. 36.
MOULTOU AND J. J. ROUSSEAU.
31
Jean Jacques Rousseau had lived for some time at
Motiers Travers, not far from Neuenberg, under the
protection of King Frederick of Prussia. Now that
it was given back to him, the home he had longed
for when in a distant land no longer ministered to
his happiness. He wrote to the Marshal of Luxem-
bourg that he had expected to come back to what
had charmed him in youth, but the landscape, the
sky, the men, all were changed. Even the hills that
had enchanted his eyes at the age of twenty were
now unrecognisable.*
Here, as in a fever-at variance with himself and
the whole world-lived the man who inspired such
confidence in his contemporaries that some came to
him as a law-giver, who could re-establish tottering
institutions; others as to a physician of souls, who
could heal wounded spirits.
Among the latter was Moultou, who related the
story of his young friend's misplaced love to the
hermit of Val-de-Travers, and how she had sacrificed
all her prospects by reason of her troubles, only to
find the originator of them cold and unfeeling, as
utterly cured of his passion as she was not.
"She
has written a letter that wrings my heart," added
Moultou. You, who so well know the torments of
the mind, would certainly pity the poor girl. But
you can do more, and help her. Speak to Gibbon
when he comes to you of the reputation she enjoys
in Geneva, not only on account of her knowledge and
66
* Jean Jacques et le Pays Romand, p. 68. Geneva, 1878.
32
MADAME DE STAËL.
intelligence but also on account of her spotless reputa-
tion and blameless life.
I assure you, my honoured
friend, that I know of nothing purer or more heavenly
than this womanly soul; and I am entirely impartial,
as I am the very one who would fain help her to leave
us for ever and go to England."*
Meanwhile, after three weeks' reflection, Gibbon
had answered Mademoiselle Curchod's last letter,
with all reserve, declining regular correspondence as
"too dangerous for his peace of mind," and above all,
although with every profession of friendship, offering
no opposition to the intentions of the girl he was once
engaged to on the subject of going abroad.
He never went to J. J. Rousseau, who differed from
Moultou in the following words: "You have given
me a commission for Mademoiselle Curchod, of which
I shall acquit myself ill, precisely on account of my
esteem for her. The coldness of Mr. Gibbon makes
me think ill of him. I have read his book. It is
deformed by the perpetual affectation and pursuit of
brilliancy. Mr. Gibbon is no man for me. I cannot
think him well adapted to Mademoiselle Curchod.
He that does not know her value is unworthy of her;
he that knows it, and can desert her, is a man to be
despised."
Gibbon could afford quietly to ignore the literary
censure, as it was unjust; with respect to the judg-
ment on his personal behaviour, he had good grounds
* J. Levallois, J. J. Rousseau, ses Amis et ses Ennemis, p. 1.
† Essai sur l'Étude de Littérature.
MOULTOU AND J. J. ROUSSEAU.
33
for being sensitive. Years afterwards he tried to
defend himself.* The breach was however widened
still further between him and Mademoiselle Curchod,
and this time under Voltaire's roof.
The latter had betaken himself to Switzerland in
1756, after the well-known passages between him and
his friend and patron, Frederick.
He spent the first two years of this exile of his own
choosing in Lausanne, where he led the brilliant life
of supremacy and hospitality, in allusion to which he
used to say that he had been the hotel-keeper for all
Europe, and had received between three and four
hundred Englishmen at his house, who were so devoted
to their own country that hardly any of them ever
remembered him after their departure.†
Amongst these Englishmen was Gibbon, who saw
Voltaire act his tragedies, supported by a troupe of
ladies and gentlemen from Lausanne, trained by him-
self, in the theatre at his villa of "Mon Repos."
Whilst Rousseau addressed his letters to d'Alembert
"on the dangers of the theatre for a small town,
where the customs are still pure," Voltaire, in the
first flush of success, was also sending him news that
"Zaire" was better played on the shores of the Lake
of Geneva than in Paris: he had an audience of two
hundred people, who were just as well able to give
an opinion as any other public in Europe, and he
had drawn tears from all these Swiss eyes.
* Gibbon, My Life and Writings, chap. iv.
† Voltaire to Madame du Deffand, i. 219.
VOL. I.
D
34
MADAME DE STAËL.
From Lausanne Voltaire went to Geneva, which
place ventured to show more opposition to his influence,
and in consequence was set down by him as inhabited
by 24,000 argumentative beings, a ridiculously anti-
quated town.
This "petitissime, parvulissime, et pedantissime re-
publique" he soon exchanged for Ferney, and thence
summoned his friends in Geneva, and any strangers
who might be there, to share in its pleasures.*
These included the Duchess of La Rochefoucauld
d'Enville, and through her and Moultou (who had
accomplished the apparently impossible feat of living
in friendly relations both with the Patriarch of
Ferney and with the Hermit of Motiers) Mademoiselle
Curchod was introduced to Voltaire. She made such
a good impression on him that he received her into
the envied band of his correspondents, and many of
the graceful fanciful letters which, even in his ad-
vanced years, he found time and inclination to write
to women, bore her address, and appeared later on in
Grimm's literary correspondence.
At one of the Ferney theatrical representations,
Mademoiselle Curchod once again met Gibbon.
This unexpected encounter revived the scarcely
allayed storm in her breast, and his behaviour con-
firmed the old saying, that those who have inflicted
an injury seldom, if ever, can forgive.
He was so neglectful, she says herself "so cruel,"
* Lucien Perey et Gaston Maugras, La Vie intime de Voltaire aux
Delices et á Ferney. Paris, Calman Levey, 1885.
MADEMOISELLE CURCHOD MEETS NECKER. 35
that she once more thought it necessary to write to
him and allude to the past.
But of what avail are reproaches and complaints in
such a case? As no further understanding could be
possible between this cold-blooded young man and the
still romantic girl of six-and-twenty, it naturally fol-
lowed that a further residence in her own country
under these circumstances became unbearable to her.
Just about that time a young widow, Madame de
Vermenoux, arrived from Paris to consult Tronchin.
She spent a very sociable winter at Geneva, and,
amongst others, she saw a good deal of young Bon-
stetten, and Moultou, who lived in the same house as
she did. In this way she further made the acquaint-
ance of Mademoiselle Curchod, who, on first acquaint-
ance, was set down by Bonstetten as "tall, handsome,
but a little affected." +
As the time drew near for her return to Paris
Madame de Vermenoux proposed that she should
accompany her as lady-companion. To this she unhesi-
tatingly consented, and went with her to Paris in the
spring of 1764.
The ladies got on very well together, and Made-
moiselle Curchod had only to be careful that the re-
quirements of her position in the house of the rich
young woman should not exceed the possibilities of
her own modest income. In the month of July she
first mentions the name of Necker in a letter to Moultou,
* For these and all earlier letters, d'Haussonville, Le Salon de
Madame Necker, i. 39-55, 70-76, 86.
† V. Bonstetten, p. 8. Golowkin, Lettres recueillies en Suisse.
D 2
36
MADAME DE STAËL.
as that of a visitor who might be of interest to her
correspondent as a native of Geneva.
In Paris people knew a great deal more of the reasons
that took the rich financier to the house of Madame
de Vermenoux, and it was said that before she started
for Switzerland he had proposed marriage to her.
Her first marriage had been by no means happy ;
she had besides contracted other ties, and therefore,
whilst retaining his friendship, she refused Necker's
offer.
After her death he spoke of the extraordinary fasci-
nation of his adored friend,* but, according to the
letter Mademoiselle Curchod addressed to Moultou at
Geneva, he did not long grieve as her rejected suitor.
Necker had gone to Geneva during the summer, and
there the chances of his engagement to Mademoiselle
Curchod were already discussed.
"My dear friend," she wrote, confessing the interest
that Necker had aroused in her, "he is too much in
public life to be led by one voice; he must be governed
only democratically, by the greatest number, and
thus during his whole life he will never find happi-
ness." This was the first and last time she spoke in
this objective way of the future minister. In her next
letter her heart was implicated, and she was obliged
to recant, for on his return from Geneva Necker sought
and obtained her hand in marriage.
Soon afterwards, when she had learnt to know him
*Grimm et Diderot, Correspondance Littéraire, xiv. 19-20, 1788,
Necker to Meister.
MDLLE. CURCHOD'S ENGAGEMENT TO NECKER. 37
better, she thus wrote, "Never ask, my dear James,
for the expression of my feelings. Let me enjoy my
happiness without thinking about it. In admitting it
I shall fear to lose it, and I cannot reflect upon the
blessings of my life without dreading that they should
come to an end. Think at least of the responsibility
you are taking upon yourself. I fear I shall turn you
into the most unthankful of men. If you are not one
of the best, read no further. Turn away your eyes
and tear up this letter; it is going to be an indictment
against you. Yes, my friend, you are the chain that
binds me to this earth. The moment you leave off
loving me I shall be estranged from the whole creation.
Ponder deeply as to what my happiness consists in.
Is it not the magic of your love, which makes every-
thing attractive in my eyes? I can only see a faint
reproduction of our bond in the consolations of friend-
ship; the splendour of your fortune only reminds me
of the trouble it has cost you to earn it. Vanity tempts
me to hope that I shall please you, and that by my
intellectual pursuits I may be able to retain your
affection and withstand the ravages of time. When
I lie down to rest I say to myself, 'He loves me.'
When I awake my first impulse is to thank Heaven
for such love. But my soul can never again be divided
from yours, and a greater faith in God is added to it
by this union. My friend, never let your feelings
towards me grow cold, as mine will never alter towards
you. I should regard the day of my death as the
most beautiful of my life if I knew it to be the day
38
MADAME DE STAËL.
on which
limit." *
your love for me had reached its highest
In one word, Mademoiselle Curchod was in love,
and, what was still rarer, she was, and remained, a
happy wife, giving happiness in return.
Chance so seldom separated the husband and wife,
and then only for so short a time, that, with a few
unimportant exceptions, no further correspondence
took place between them. But from daily experience
Necker could prove how entirely her love for him
filled every moment of her existence.
They were married quite quietly, without even
letting Madame de Vermenoux know the day and the
hour. Whilst it was said in Paris that this lady had
brought about the marriage to free herself from an
inconvenient adorer, who could now bore himself
with his wife,† Madame Necker no longer showed
any reserve as to her affection. "I am the wife of a
man whom I should take to be an angel if his liking
for me did not betray his weakness."‡
Six months later she writes:-"I should be the
most ungrateful of human beings if I did not offer
up prayers of thankfulness every moment of my
life."
Under Necker's own eyes she sketched the follow-
ing portrait of him for her correspondent. "Imagine
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 7.
+ Baronne d'Oberkirch, Mémoires, i. xiii.
Golowkin, Lettres recueillies en Suisse, 244, 283. Madame
Necker to Madame de Brenlès.
NECKER'S PERSONALITY.
39
the most literal creature in the world, so happily con-
vinced of his own superiority that he never notices
mine, so certain of his perspicacity that he is con-
stantly taken in, so positive that he in himself com-
bines every talent in all its perfection that it never
occurs to him to seek a pattern in others. The insig-
nificance of others surprises him, because his own
greatness suffices him, and he constantly compares
himself with others that he may satisfy himself that
he is incomparable.
"He mistakes stupid for clever people because he
considers himself to be on a summit whence all those
at his feet appear equally lowly; he nevertheless
gives preference to the stupid people, because he holds
that they are an excellent foil to his genius.
"Furthermore he is as capricious as a beautiful
woman, and just as inquisitive. I flatter myself,
however, that the harmless medicine which I proffer
to him by means of this letter (he is reading it over
my shoulder) may cure him for a time of this insuffer-
able malady."*
This sketch of character is only meant for a joke.
But even at that date Madame Necker had so little
idea of joking that a good many of the traits she
touches upon are accepted as authentic in his bio-
graphies, especially in one of the most life-like and
faithful-that written by his friend H. Meister, only
published long afterwards, although, even then, he
knew him intimately.
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, i. 115,
40
MADAME DE STAËL.
Necker's undeniable self-appreciation was best
held in check by Madame Necker's opinion of her
husband; after the sad experience of her early days
she could not but draw comparisons between him
and others, and the result was that the grateful affec-
tion Necker had inspired in her rose to passionate
adoration.
She did things for his sake that she would not have
considered desirable for her own; she sacrificed her
personal inclinations, time, strength, repose,
repose, and
health, to turn the eyes of the world upon him, and to
gather an influential and distinguished social circle
around him.
Herself unknown, and without connection or high
rank to aid her in her task, this was no easy matter
for a young foreigner to undertake. It must have
been all the more difficult for Madame Necker, as
it was only by degrees, and not without an effort,
that she gave herself up to the fascinations of a
Parisian life. As early as 1765 she thus writes to her
friend, Madame de Brenlès, in Switzerland: "The
only aim of existence in Paris is to cultivate the taste,
but this is done at the expense of genius." The men
she considered superficial, the women vain; their
corrupt morals went against her better feelings. "It
easy to resist temptation of a base description," she
wrote, "but it is much more difficult to keep the
temptation to ambition at a distance, because this
passion is so intermingled with the best qualities and
is
THE NECKERS' FIRST FRIENDS.
41
the firmest convictions that it is almost impossible
not to be possessed by it in Paris." *
Ambitious she had long been, if not for herself for
another. For his sake she undertook to form a salon
which was to be above all things literary. When the
result of Madame Necker's social endeavours and
efforts, after scarcely two years of Parisian life, came
to the ears of her friends in Switzerland, these con-
cealed neither their astonishment nor their anxiety;
and Moultou, as her most intimate friend, inquired
what was to become of her Christian convictions in
such surroundings. "My dear friend," she replied,
"how can you mistrust me for a single moment? The
reasons of my faith came to me at my birth, and,
although they are the foundations of my happiness, you
can think me capable of giving them up. You may
accuse me of exaggerated enthusiasm, but ought you
to be the one to complain that I honour everything
that is right and good? I receive a few authors, but
I lost no time in acquainting them with my views,
neither are theirs disturbed in my presence. At my
age nothing is easier than to regulate the tone of a
pleasant domestic circle. I certainly come in contact
with a great many atheists, but their arguments have
never made the smallest impression upon me, and, if
ever they penetrated to my heart, they could only
cause a shudder."+
* Golowkin, Lettres diverses recueillies en Suisse, 264. Genève,
† D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, i. 164.
1
1827.
42
MADAME DE STAËL.
Looking back upon this period she wrote later on
to the author Thomas: "Do you remember how I
found myself twenty years ago in the midst of all
those distinguished people of European reputation,
when I used to hear all the ideas upon which my
happiness rested treated as chimeras? It cost me a
severe struggle to retain my convictions against this
stream of unbelief."*
Under certain circumstances she did not hesitate
to stand up for what was sacred to her with a courage
that even her opponents, such as Grimm, fully appre-
ciated. During one of her Friday dinners, being led
into a discussion that could no longer be kept within
bounds, with Grimm himself, and having argued a
long time without being able to convince him, she
at length burst into tears, but felt herself obliged to
write before the end of the evening, to beg him to
forgive her for what had occurred.† However, it
was not with men who pursued that particular line of
thought that she formed the ideal friendships so neces-
sary to her mental tendency and warmth of feeling.
The names which must always be linked with hers
besides that of Moultou are those of Thomas and
Buffon. In the eighteenth century, Buffon was con-
sidered equal in fame to Voltaire, and with Rousseau
and Montesquieu he takes the first rank among his
contemporaries.
"The form of an athlete and the mind of a
* Madame Necker, Mélanges, iii. 213.
† D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, i. 150.
MADAME NECKER AND BUFFON.
philosopher," as Voltaire describes him.
43
Mallet du
Pan sets him down as the type of a philosopher; just,
rather than generous, reasonable in all things, loving
order, and promoting it around him. From the age
of thirty-two, when he was appointed director of the
Royal Gardens, he dedicated his whole life to natural
history, and not quite fifty years later he finished a
work of thirty-six volumes, which opened new paths
to the learning of that time, and was like a poem
written in prose.
The Château de Montbard in
Burgundy is inseparably connected with the name of
Buffon, as Ferney is with the memory of Voltaire;
Les Charmettes, or the Hermitage at Montmorency,
with that of Jean Jacques Rousseau; the Château de
la Brède and its English park, with the original plan
of L'Esprit des Lois. There he usually led a retired
existence, divided between his work-room, in a
secluded tower on the property, and looking after his
garden. This was now and then interrupted by visits
to the capital. On one of these latter occasions, at
the age of sixty-seven, having just lost a much-loved
wife, he made acquaintance with Madame Necker. This
first meeting, arranged by a mutual friend, led to an
intimacy which lasted till Buffon's death. "I adore
you so sincerely," he once wrote to her, "that you
cannot fail to be thankful for it. I love you for this
life and the next, and even for Eternity, if your views
concerning it are more settled than mine, which it is
to be hoped they are." As far as it lay in mortal
hands, Buffon proved his words. As his end drew
44
MADAME DE STAËL.
nigh, Madame Necker left her own house to be near
him in his last moments. He had her picture beside
him, painted on a snuff-box, which she had given him.
Necker's book, On the Importance of Religious Convic-
tion, had appeared shortly before, and Buffon listened
with great pleasure whilst his son read it aloud to
him.*
When Madame Necker entered, he deplored
the tragedy he had to offer her. In the brief moments
of repose granted to him during his terrible sufferings,
he found comfort in clasping her hand, and in telling
her how happy he was made by the sight of her, at a
moment when nothing else could any longer give him
either pleasure or joy. In the sketch she left behind
her of the last moments of her great friend she care-
fully asserts that he departed openly acknowledging
his acceptance of the Christian faith. But when she
looked back upon his scientific knowledge she arrived
at a very different conclusion, by no means so consoling
to her. It has been remarked of a greater man than
Buffon that he resembled one who had wandered
through and admired all the interior of a splendid
palace, and then had forgotten to leave his card on
the master of it. § Buffon did not quite do this,
inasmuch as the name of the Creator is frequently
mentioned in his works. But it is well known that
in his remarks against Hérault de Seychelles he said
* Madame Necker, Mélanges, iii. 253, 318, 376.
† Buffon to Madame Necker two days before his death.
Nadault de Buffon, Correspondence Inedité de Buffon. Madame
Necker on Buffon's death.
§ Flier Letters, 47.
GIBBON IN PARIS.
45
that it was only necessary to insert the term "Creative
Power of Nature" where he had used the word
"Creator."
In the spring of 1765 Gibbon again returned to
Paris, and was hospitably received by the Neckers.
He speaks of this renewal of acquaintance in the
terms he generally selected when alluding to Madame
Necker, terms which were not exactly well chosen.
"The Curchod," he writes, "I saw at Paris. She
was very fond of me, and the husband particularly
civil. Could they insult me more cruelly? Ask me
every evening to supper, go to bed, and leave me
alone with his wife. What an impertinent security!
it is making an old lover of mighty little consequence.
She is as handsome as ever, and much genteeler,
seems pleased with her fortune rather than proud of
it. I was (perhaps indiscreetly enough) exalting
Nanette d'Illen's good luck, and her fortune. What
fortune?' (said she with an air of contempt) 'not above
20,000 livres a year.' I smiled, and she caught
'What airs I give myself
herself up immediately.
·
in despising 20,000 livres a year; why, a year ago I
looked on 800 livres as the summit of my wishes.'"*
The pendant to this letter is another from Madame
Necker to her friend Madame de Brenlès in Switzer-
land, written November the 7th, 1765: "Have I told
you yet that we have seen Gibbon here? His arrival
gave me special pleasure, not that I had the least
* Gibbon, Memoirs of my Life and Writings, 68, 79, note 10.
46
MADAME DE STAËL.
affection left for a man who deserved it so little, but
because it was such a complete and well-deserved
satisfaction to my womanly pride. I saw him almost
daily; he was gentle, agreeable, and reserved almost to
shyness, a daily witness of my husband's affection for
me, his mental superiority, his amiable disposition. The
warmth of his admiration for the outward splendour
surrounding me for the first time made me value that
to which I had hitherto been indifferent, and which I
had even found disagreeable.'
""*
Years passed on, the youth and maiden who once
had met on the shores of the Lake of Geneva, and
who with their different dispositions had loved and
misunderstood each other, were now grown old. In
the summer-house on his terrace at Lausanne, Gibbon
put the finishing strokes to a work the like of which
but few achieve. Even in that hour, in sharp contrast
to the joy of success, came the sensation of mutability
in all things earthly, and the comparison between the
undying reputation of the work and the short period
of life's enjoyment still left to its author. Gibbon
was then fifty years old, and stood solitary in his
fame. He found it so irksome that five years after-
wards he thought of a tardy marriage. The last
letter he received from Madame Necker was on this
subject. She had gone back to Switzerland with her
husband during the Revolution, and spent the winter
* Golowkin, Lettres diverses recueillies en Suisse, 265.
† Gibbon, Memoirs of my Life and Writings, 190.
GIBBON IN PARIS.
47
at Geneva, as did also Gibbon. On the 15th of
June in that year she wrote from Coppet: "We often
think of the enjoyable hours we spent with you when
by the favour of Providence the object of the pure
and precious affection of my youth was brought into
contact with that other which secured such an envi-
able lot to me in this world. This unusual combination
and your unequalled powers in conversation led me
into enchanted realms; the link between the past
and the present caused truth to take the form of a
dream. Could you not decide on prolonging it?
Coppet is at its best; I will not add anything more,
for we live quite in retirement; the Genevese remain
in the town, and owing to bad times they leave their
country-houses empty. Even M--has felt constrained
to marry again and we hardly ever see him
I therefore pray you to avoid any such tardy union ;
the marriage that brings happiness to our riper years
must be contracted in early youth; then only is the
union complete. Inclinations blend with each other,
sentiments assimilate, ideas are shared, the intellectual
qualities are modelled on each other, the pleasure of
life is doubled, and youth is prolonged; for the impres-
sions of the mind govern the eye, and even vanished
beauty does not lose its power. Who would venture
to find a worthy companion for you, who have reached
the highest mental development, whose whole life is
spent in a fixed pursuit? An unsatisfactory union
always reminds me of the statue of Horace: you are
wedded to fame, and your friends who love you look
48
MADAME DE STAËL.
on the bond without envy as it is reflected on them-
selves."* And thus the intercourse between Gibbon
and Madame Necker drew to a harmonious conclusion.
Born in the same year he was destined to end his
days but a few months before she did; he died un-
married on the 17th February, 1794, not quite fifty-
seven years old. Fate had not been unjust; accord-
ing to Goethe's favourite saying, "To each in old
age was apportioned in full measure what they had
wished for in youth; solitary greatness to the man,
to the woman the happiness of a deep and reciprocated
affection."
In the second year of her marriage Madame Necker's
daughter and only child was born on the 22nd of
April, 1766, and named Anne Louise Germaine. After
a few
years the Neckers were obliged to exchange their
house in the Rue Michel le Comte for the Hôtel le
Blanc in the Rue Cléry, considered one of the finest
in Paris, but pulled down in the year 1842 when the
Rue Mulhouse was built. The Necker family con-
tinued to live there until they exchanged it for their
residence in the Contrôle-générale.† The choice of
a summer resort soon followed. At first Necker used to
hire the small Château of Madrid built by Francis I.
in the Bois de Boulogne after his release: then he
bought the beautiful Château de Saint Ouen on the
banks of the Seine, with its terraces and park, and
which was near enough to Paris to allow his guests
* Madame Necker, Mélanges, i. 360.
† Sainte-Beuve, Causeries de Lundi, xii. 210, note.
MADAME NECKER'S OPINION UPON PARIS. 49
to return there late at night. All their pleasantest
memories were associated with this place. Madame
Necker herself could not withstand the seductions of
this new existence. "One could and might be happier
elsewhere" (she wrote to her friend in Switzerland),
"but in order to be so one must never have known
the fascination, which, although it does not actually
constitute happiness itself, still poisons any other form
of existence. We are like the gourmands, whose pam-
pered palates weary of every delicacy and yet can
never go back to a good simple diet. Both bodily
and mental taste is marvellously indulged in this
place, and we, physically and morally, work out the
story of that young sybarite who was prevented from
sleeping by a crumpled rose-leaf."*
She does not conceal the difficulty she had in adapt-
ing herself to this new world. "It is quite true that I
do not hold to the same ideas as when I first came to
this country. I held that literature was the key to
everything that a man only made mental progress
by means of books, or became great and remarkable
by the extent of his learning: but I now recognise
that an author only knows certain subjects, which are
of no use to him under any other circumstances, and
this has been my own invariable experience where
those I chance to meet did not possess general ability.
In society I had nothing to say; the speech in use
was ever unknown to me: although forced, woman-
Madame Necker to Madame de
* Golowkin, Lettres, &c., 413.
Brenlès, Paris, April 6, 1773.
VOL. I.
E
50
MADAME DE STAËL.
like, to win men's approval, I was unable to understand
all the gradations of self-love, and gave offence where
I sought to flatter. What would be called sincerity
in Switzerland in Paris goes by the name of selfishness.
Here carelessness in small matters is called ignorance
of good manners; in one word, as I never found the
right tone, and, above all, was not quick at repartee,
as my own constant blunders only made me shyer,
and I saw that my own ideas would never amalgamatė
with those around me, I resolved to bury my small
capital and never to resuscitate it, and thus, if possible,
to live more in harmony with my surroundings.” *
The Neckers' circle had nevertheless the greatest in-
fluence even in relation to literature; it is very closely
connected with the intellectual movement of the second
half of the eighteenth century in France,† and some
of the best-known episodes in the history of the times
are intertwined with its memories. It was Madame
Necker who invited a select audience to listen to the
first reading of Paul and Virginia by Bernardin de
Saint Pierre in her salon, but this gem in French prose
was not appreciated on its first appearance, and the
author, who enjoyed the special friendship of Necker
and his wife, had to go through this experience. When
Buffon was seen to be asleep and another to be laugh-
ing a few of the ladies in the company hastened to
* Golowkin, Lettres, &c., 400. Madame Necker to Madame de
Brenlès, Paris, 31 August, 1771.
† Le Salon de Madame Necker. Revue de Deux Mondes, 1833,
ii. 691,
LITERARY IMPORTANCE OF THE NECKER SALON. 51
.
conceal their tears, and the romance fell flat. Only
in the last few years of their existence in 1787 did
discriminating society make good its mistake, but the
book now belonged to another period and helped to
usher in a new epoch in literature. No less famous
is the dinner of April 17th, 1770, to which Madame
Necker invited Diderot, Suard, the Marquis de Chas-
tellux, Grimm, de Schomberg, Marmontel, d'Alembert,
Thomas, Saint Lambert, Saurin, Helvetius, Raynal,
and the Abbés Arnauld and Morellet, and on which
occasion, at the instigation of their hostess, the idea
was started of erecting a statue of the Patriarch of
Ferney, to be executed by Pigalle. Concerning the
design, to be supplied by the sculptor, a long dispute
took place, in which verses to Madame Necker from
Voltaire find a place. They are reproduced in, a
milder form in Beuchot's edition of his letters, but
the original lines found afterwards amongst Suard's
papers read differently.* Notwithstanding strenuous
* Vous craignez, beauté délicate
Que ce Pigalle trop ingénu
Ne me présente à vous tout nu,
Mais pardonnez-lui, s'il me flatte.
Quand son ciseau vous sculptera
Ne soyez pas si renchérie;
Ou tout le monde lui criera
Otez moi cette draperie.
Les grâces n'en eurent jamais;
L'habillement les défigure,
Et vouloir cacher leurs attraits,
C'est un péché contre nature.
E 2
52
MADAME DE STAËL.
opposition the undertaking succeeded, owing to the
support of the King of Denmark, with that of the
Empress Catherine and Frederick the Great. By the
advice of Diderot, who at that time upheld the antique,
Pigalle produced an undraped Voltaire, with marvel-
lously life-like features and startlingly faithful.* This
statue, treated in the manner of an anatomical study,
was certainly never exhibited; later on it came into
the possession of a nephew of Voltaire's, who in 1816
presented it to the library of the Institute, where it
still is to be found, in company with the heart of the
philosopher.† It is more to Madame Necker's credit
that she supported every work of mercy and charity
than that she corresponded with Voltaire, inspired the
muse of Thomas, and was the friend of Buffon. After
her death Necker had the consolation of referring to
many such undertakings, some of which had been
successfully called to life and others personally carried
out by her unselfish efforts. It is worthy of remark
that Madame Necker was the first to enlist the assist-
ance of sisterhoods in this work, which she carried on
simultaneously with her efforts to ameliorate the con-
ditions of prison-life. She spent much energy upon
the reception and bringing-up of foundlings, but, above
Je consens qu'un lourd vêtement
Couvre ma chétive machine,
Mais quant a vous, objet charmant,
Prenez la gaze la plus fine.
* Grimm et Diderot, Correspondance Littéraire, i. 118, 164, 465;
iii. 249.
† Morellet, Mémoires, i. 195.
† Madame Necker, Mélanges, i. Notice sur Madame Necker, xxxv.
MADAME NECKER A MOTHER TO THE POOR. 53
all, her name is inseparably connected with sweeping
reforms with regard to the better nursing and treat-
ment of the patients in hospitals. At the period when
she first came to the capital, priding itself on every
refinement of luxury, sufferers in hospital were not
even given separate beds, but as they arrived were
added to the ranks, and indifferently shared a bed
with those on the road to recovery and those who
were dangerously ill, the poorly or the dying, a patient
with an infectious disease or another merely tempo-
rarily indisposed. The most frightful scenes and
fatal results were the daily consequence of this state
of things in the dreaded refuges provided for earthly
suffering. The unfortunate human race was sacrificed
under the very eyes of the nurses and doctors in a
way that happily is now unknown. For many years
Madame Necker's interest in this matter had been
aroused, and when Necker was first appointed Minister
to Louis XIV. she succeeded in obtaining a monetary
grant for the establishment of the small hospital which
still bears her name; and further secured the help of
twelve sisters of mercy, who undertook the care of
the patients under the direction of the vicar of Saint
Sulpice. Although the Archbishop of Paris was the
sworn enemy both of the Jansenists and the Philo-
sophers, he was so entirely of the same mind as Madame
Necker, on the mutual ground of love to our neigh-
bours, that when he won a considerable sum in a law-
suit against the city of Paris he gave it over to Necker,
begging him, with remarkable tolerance, to devote it
54
MADAME DE STAËL.
:
to charitable purposes, and merely to account for it
to the king.* It was principally through the instru-
mentality of his wife that Necker, after a very few
years of married life, came into pleasant and satis-
factory relations both with the great world and the no
less influential literary world, and obtained sufficient
insight into his surroundings to enable him to take
his place on the perilous stage of Parisian life and
his share in the ever-increasing excitement of the day.
* Necker, Euvres complètes, iii. 497, &c. Auguste de Staël,
i. clix. Œuvres complètes. Henri Martin, Histoire de France.
CHAPTER II.
Necker retires from business - Commencement of the reign of
Louis XIV. - Turgot - Coronation at Rheims-Queen and
Parlement against Turgot-Financial necessities of the French
Nation-Necker's appointment-First measures-Montesquieu—
Influence of English ideas-The States-General-First Provincial
Assembly--Its usefulness-Necker's retirement--Franco-American
alliance-Antipathy against England-Dangers of alliance with
America-Nature of the American Constitution-Transition from
Liberty to Equality, from Reform to Revolution.
IN 1768 the position Necker had made for himself as
a man of business induced his native town of Geneva
to confide the management of its affairs into his
hands. As set forth in the business-like style of his
official answer to the "Magnificent little Council,"
Necker undertook this with a request that "regard
might be had to his talents," and he declined to
accept any remuneration. The post in itself was not
very important, but it procured him access to Court
and frequent intercourse with the Prime Minister
Choiseul, who personally esteemed him and became
much attached to him. The only diplomatic difficulty
Necker experienced in the outset of his labours con-
sisted in moderating the zeal of his government for
the good of the little Republic, and in making it
56
MADAME DE STAËL.
understand that the affairs of Geneva could have only
a comparatively small claim on the attention of the
French Minister.* He had, however, plenty of oppor-
tunities of serving his native town, and afterwards
he looked back on this first post as that whence he
had derived the most unalloyed satisfaction.† Shortly
after this nomination Necker joined the administra-
tion of the East India Company.
Just at the time when the Government threatened
its existence, and in the name of Free Trade attacked
its privileges through the Abbé Morellet, Necker pub-
lished a special statement in defence of the share-
holders. He did not, however, succeed in saving the
Company, which was dissolved by royal decree in
1770. Shortly after its dissolution he carried out his
plan of quitting the bank, and retired in the year
1772 with a fortune of seven and a half million francs,
surrendering all share in the business. De Germany,
his brother, and Girardot, undertook to carry it on,
and eventually the son of the great physiologist and
poet, Albert von Haller, joined Girardot in a partner-
ship, which under the Convention and the Directory
embarked in various bold ventures, and obtained the
contract for the Italian army from Bonaparte.‡ Necker
used often to say how easy it would have been for
him, with his intimate knowledge of the European
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 84.
† Baron Auguste de Staël, Notice sur Necker, i. xii. Œuvres
complètes.
Revue Suisse, 1856, 658, &c. Die Zeitgenossen, 1816-1817 and
1818-1819, vols. i and iv.
COMMENCEMENT OF THE REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 57
markets, still further to increase his fortune, but
having reached the age of forty he decided on follow-
ing the mode of life he most inclined to. His unself-
ishness and indifference in money matters were so
sincere that, his wife asserts, from that moment
the whole management of his immense fortune fell
into her hands, and she had to buy and sell, farm,
build, and manage everything, without being able to
induce him to talk over these matters with her. "The
comic result is," she continues, "that at last the
dependants have become so accustomed to taking all
their orders from the mistress of the house, that they
imagine Necker to have no knowledge of money
matters, seeing that he keeps so entirely aloof from
them."*
This indifference to money is a fine trait in
Necker's character, and outweighs many weaknesses.
On the 10th of May, 1774, the corpse of the old
king was carried, without any kind of state, to the
vault at St. Denis, amidst the insults of the people,
and Louis XVI. began to reign, not having reached
the age of twenty. The young monarch was met
by the question-no longer to be evaded-as to
whether he alone would obstruct the impulse now
actuating France; a question partly influencing the
best traditions of the monarchy. The greatest and
most successful of the sovereigns of that dynasty had
had Sully by his side; under his grandson Fénélon,
Vauban, and Bois Guilbert had in vain planned the
outlines of a policy which would have saved him
* Madame Necker, Mélanges, ii. 372.
58
MADAME DE STAËL.
from shipwreck; even under Louis XV. the reform-
ing element had not disappeared which d'Argenson
and more especially Machault represented in the
king's council. The serious youth of Louis XVI.,
and his well-known conscientiousness and kind-
ness of heart, gave rise to the hope that his reign
would be a contrast to that of his grandfather. His
first selection did not justify this expectation. He
passed over the enlightened and experienced Machault,
and chose Maurepas, who was alike frivolous and old.
Maurepas entrusted the Foreign Affairs to the Count
de Vergennes, and next sought for some one to fill the
post of the outgoing Minister of Marine. Chance,
the powerful ally of the ancient régime, directed his
choice towards Turgot, the last of the great statesmen
of the monarchy.
Turgot was forty-seven years old, and so handsome
that his features recalled the noblest creations of the
antique; once seen he could not easily be forgotten.
He was first appointed Minister of Marine, and in
August 1774 became Controller-General, which meant
Finance Minister, and Secretary of State for most of
the Home Affairs.
"If good does not come of this," writes d'Alembert
to Frederick, "it shows that good does not exist."
One of his biographers writes, "This man raises
ambition into a virtue." His appointment was con-
sidered as a concession to the philosophers, as he
agreed with some of their ideas, and laboured for
toleration in religious matters, for the triumph of
TURGOT BECOMES MINISTER.
59
humane principles in administrative and economical
questions, and for the universal spread of education.
His political doctrine offered a most emphatic con-
trast to the revolutionary doctrine, as he exacted
nothing beyond a reformation of the existing state of
things, and instead of losing himself in a perilous
Utopia he was content to deal with the present
situation, declining to abolish even the worst abuses
without offering compensation to those who might be
injured by their abolition.* When an attempt was
made to prejudice Louis XVI. against him, by point-
ing him out as an encyclopædist, the king, to the joy
of Voltaire, replied, "He is an honest man and
that is enough for me." Unfortunately, the distin-
guishing feature in the life of Turgot was his persistent
ill-luck. The fruits of his exertions as Intendant of
Limoges were entirely destroyed by the famine of
1770-1771, which sent up the public debt to a million,
and this after he had done his very utmost to diminish
it. In the beginning of 1775, when still in office, he
wasseized with illness, at a moment when every interest
threatened to combine against him at Court. Next a
rise in prices was artificially brought about by the
operations of financiers, and, in consequence, the so-
called "guerre des farines" broke out in various parts
of the kingdom, being purposely originated in Paris by
those who had obtained a monopoly of the corn-trade
through Turgot's legislation, which had taken off all
* Foncin, Ministère de Turgot, 548-549.
60
MADAME DE STAËL.
restrictions in that direction.* Prosecution of the
culprits was suppressed by the king's command, as it
would have entailed far-reaching and painful disclo-
sures. Turgot himself believed in the complicity of
the Prince of Conti. By an unintentional but most
unfortunate coincidence, Necker's book on the "Corn
Laws and Trade” came out just at this time. It rejected
unconditional free trade in corn, not only in foreign
countries but also in the interior, and therefore added
to the ferment by making Turgot's administration
answerable for the momentary increase of distress.
Necker's sentence directed against the Economists-
"anatomical experiments should not be attempted on
living bodies"-took unto itself wings. Unfortunately
he further excited public attention by attacking
property, in favour of cheap bread for the poor. He
described the rich as "devouring the substance of the
poor," and put sentences, such as these, into the
mouth of the people-"What care we for your laws
concerning property? we possess none. Your laws
of equity? We have nothing to defend. Of freedom?
If we do not work to-morrow we must die."+
The coronation of the young king took place at
Rheims in the June of the year thus unhappily
begun. Turgot had proposed that the sentence in the
oath should be omitted wherein the king solemnly
* Idem, 214. Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. i. 166.
† De l'Administration de Monsieur Necker par lui-même, Œuvres
complètes, vi. 8. De Lavergne, Les Economistes Français au 18ième
siècle, 147. Necker, Du Commerce et de la Législation des Grains.
QUEEN AND PARLEMENT AGAINST TURGOT. 61
promises a thorough extirpation of heresy. Louis XVI.
endeavoured to meet the difficulty by murmuring a
few unintelligible words at that particular moment.
On their return from Rheims, Turgot submitted the
memorandum on toleration to him, that his conscience
might be quieted and his position freed from any
misapprehension. Owing to circumstances and to the
existing scarcity, Turgot had to put off his intended
reforms until better times: they were to include the
entire remission, by means of momentary compensation,
of all feudal rights upon property belonging to the
nobility and clergy, as well as their total abolition
on the Crown domains. These better times came no
more as far as he was concerned. The queen could
not forgive the retrenchment of her establishment,
and became the centre of all the Versailles cabals.
Count Creutz, the Swedish ambassador, wrote in April
1776 to his royal master, Gustavus III. that "all the
great people, all the Parlements, the entire financial
clique, and the ladies of the Court, had leagued them-
selves together in a powerful combination against
Turgot."* Mercy-Argenteau, Maria Theresa's ambas-
sador, tried in vain to restrain her royal daughter.†
There remained the king. In February 1776, when
the waves of opposition ran high, he spoke the his-
torical words, "Il n'y a que M. Turgot et moi qui
aimons le peuple." Two months later his power of
* Foncin 513. Geffroy, Gustav III. et la Cour de France.
† Geffroy et Arneth, Marie Antoinette, &c. Correspondance, ii. 439,
April 13, 1776.
Foncin, Ministère de Turgot, 422.
62
MADAME DE STAËL.
:
resistance was exhausted. Turgot handed him a
fresh memorial in the beginning of May, and after he
had spoken the king asked coldly if that were all.
On receiving an affirmative answer he replied, "Well,
so much the better," and thereupon turned his back
on his minister. The Count of Provence described
the king's disposition as consisting of smooth billiard-
balls, and these had now fallen asunder. The king
did not again receive Turgot, who was dismissed on
the 12th of May. The queen could scarcely be dis-
suaded from sending him to the Bastille. Mercy
asserts that she it was who decided Turgot's fall.*
The letter which the Emperor Joseph addressed to
her in July referring to these matters is well known
'You interfere, dear sister, to depose ministers;
have you thoroughly considered your right to inter-
fere with the government of France? Have you had
sufficient experience ?" Nevertheless it was unjust
to lay the whole blame on her and on the privileged
classes: the people rejoiced in like manner when it
heard of the fall of its best friend, and thanked the
king with effusion for it. Turgot's inexcusable error
lay in his idea that he only needed to be in the right
and to have the wish to benefit others. Frederick the
Great and Maria Theresa agreed with Voltaire about
Turgot. Voltaire was in Paris in 1778, and on meet-
* Mastier, Vie de Turgot, 593, &c. Geffroy et Arneth, Marie
Antoinette, &c. ii. 442.
† Arneth, Marie Antoinette, Joseph II., et Leopold II. Letters,
1-3.
NECKER IN ENGLAND.
63
ing Turgot seized his hand, crying: "Let me kiss the
hand which has worked the salvation of the people."
At the age of fifty-four he died a victim to gout, and
still more to the results of mental over-work. At the
time of Turgot's fall Necker had gone with his wife
and friend Suard to make a short stay in England.
'How Necker will rejoice to hear this," wrote Madame
du Deffand to the Duchess of Choiseul at Chanteloup.*
Meanwhile Gibbon was doing the honours of London
to the French guests, and Walpole those of his de-
lightful property Strawberry Hill.
66
Necker's writings contain nothing about this visit,
but Madame Necker eagerly read Milton and Pope,
Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, translated Gray's Elegy
for a literary collection of Suard's, and wished herself
back in Westminster Abbey, to enjoy everything over
again with her friend the author Thomas.† The
Neckers had been back in Paris several months when
Clugny (Turgot's successor) died.
No one knew the state of the public finances better
than Necker did. All means had failed since Turgot's
retirement. The Dutch would lend no more money.
Necker himself had already come to the rescue of the
king's financial necessities during the administration
of the Abbé Terray in 1770, and without receiving
interest he had advanced money, and thereby ren-
* Garat, Mémoires sur Suard, ii. 318. Madame du Deffand,
Correspondance, iii, 217.
† Madame Necker, Mélanges, iii. 172.
Littéraire, ix. 280.
Querard, La France
64
MADAME DE STAËL.
dered the purchase of corn possible for the provinces
where the distress was greatest. In 1772 he had
once more lent several millions.
99
"We implore you to come to our assistance in the
course of the day. Time presses, you are our last
resource; we reckon on your support to save the royal
credit.' The French financial Secretary of State
found it necessary to apply to Necker in this tone.*
And now in the spring of 1776 the great question
of a rupture with England and the intervention of
France in favour of the American colonies pressed
for an answer, for the second time in the same year,
and the "first gunshot was synonymous with the
bankruptcy of the State."* When Necker under-
took to restore confidence, and even in the event of war
to meet the requirements of royalty, the treasury
was exhausted, but it did not appear practicable that
he could be appointed Contróleur-Général, that is,
Finance-Minister. A compromise was therefore found,
and Taboureau des Réaux retained the title, whilst
Necker administered the finances as Director of the
Royal Treasury. Hitherto the post had always been
filled by Parlementeers; and, moreover, until 1776
Protestants were merely tolerated in France; they
had no rights of citizenship, and their children were
not considered legitimate. Nevertheless the king
gave his consent, and signed the appointment on the
22nd of October, 1776. The money-market greeted
* A. de Staël, Notice, i. xi. xxi.-xxiii.
† Quoted from d'Ivau, Terray's predecessor.
NECKER'S APPOINTMENT.
65
this as it had done that of Turgot with a considerable
rise. The Genevese rejoiced over the success of their
fellow-citizen. In his honour the "magnificent little
council" struck the first of the eighty-two medals
which he was to receive in the course of his public
career,* and the literary history of Geneva says of
Necker's works that they should be the hand-book
of all princes who desire the good of their people.†
The Court only saw in Necker the opponent of his
hated predecessor, and flattered itself with the hope
that such financial talent would carry out its aim
without cutting down expenses. The bishops made
objections to the choice of a Protestant. "I will
sacrifice him," replied Maurepas, "if the clergy will
undertake to pay off the French national debt." But
among the members of the French episcopate Necker
was to find true friends and upholders of his work.
Finally, the people rejoiced that Necker had under-
taken the conduct of affairs.
Thus began Necker's first ministry. He took up
a different position to that of Turgot. What the
latter had not succeeded in it was impossible for
Necker to attempt. As a Protestant he had beyond
all things to consider the clergy; as a foreigner he
had to use the utmost discretion in his courtly rela-
tions; belonging to the middle class he had to protect
the privileged classes-those of parliamentary as
well as hereditary nobility—if he were not to fall a
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 109.
† Senebier, Histoire Littéraire de Genève, iii. 164.
VOL. I.
F
66
MADAME DE STAËL.
victim to the opposition which was certain at once to
arise against his first efforts in any new direction.
The natural result of finding himself in such an ex-
posed position was, that as far as possible Necker
restricted himself in the first years of his ministry to
financial affairs, and renounced any projects for far-
reaching reform;* and here we must recall the fact
that, under the ancien régime, home-affairs in France
were almost entirely under the control of the Finance
Minister, † but even this limited sphere was not easy
to manage. Hardly a year had elapsed after his
appointment when a difference of opinion between
him and Taboureau resulted in the retirement of the
latter; and on the 22nd of June, 1777, Necker was
named Director-General of Finance. He stipulated
that he should receive no salary, and to this Louis
XVI. reluctantly gave his consent. Even with this
new qualification he remained subordinate to Maure-
pas, and, what was still more remarkable, he continued
to be debarred from attending the Councils held in the
king's presence, or from himself laying his plans
before the king, a frightful disadvantage in those days
when the personal decision of the king was the only
guarantee of continuance in office.
In the eighteenth century republicanism was not
thought much of in Europe, whereas absolute monarchy
had many supporters in the days of Frederick and
* A. de Staël, Notice, i. 46. Necker, Euvres complètes, iii.
Premier Ministère.
† Leser, Necker's Second Administration, 12.
CONTRASTS IN THE POLITICAL ASPECT.
67
Catherine, of Maria Theresa, Charles III., and Leopold
of Tuscany.
Side by side with the theory of princely supremacy
and omnipotence of the state, almost exclusively held
in Germany during the second half of the eighteenth¸
century, there arose a new doctrine, the progress and
development of which were in close connection with
the spread of ideas and theories which, in 1688, had
extended their sway in England, and had now been
attentively received by the French. Across the sea
it had needed all the inconceivable blindness, and
consequent misconception, of the last crowned repre-
sentative of the old dynasty to shake the conservative
adherence of the English people to the House of
Stuart. The excellently-written history of English
party-spirit in the eighteenth century sets forth no-
thing with greater distinctness than the fact that the
hardest triumph of Liberty was not over external foes
but over prevailing popular opinion.* Long after the
struggle between unconditional obedience and liberty
for the people was decided in favour of the latter,
the permanency of the change worked by William of
Orange hung upon mere chance, whereas, once the
English theories on political freedom were spread
over France, they received unconditional support.
The period at which English influence in literature
began to prevail over that of Italy and Spain we
may gather from a novel of Prévost's, Mémoires d'un
Homme de Qualité, as well as from other works of that
* Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, i.
F 2
68
MADAME DE STAËL.
time. The scene in the first part of the book is laid in
Spain in 1731, and in its course the hero praises the
English constitution, and gives an excellent opinion
upon Shakespeare. French translations followed of
Daniel de Foe, Steele, Swift, and Addison. Prévost
himself undertook to render Richardson's Pamela,
Clarissa, and Grandison into French, and prepared
the way for the Nouvelle Héloïse.* The pioneers
of the intellectual movement in the eighteenth cen-
tury Voltaire, Buffon, Montesquieu, Rousseau,
and with them a considerable number of other authors
and learned men found a hospitable reception in
England, at times spent years in that country, and
on their return retailed the English ideas as their
own. Montesquieu, who principally contributed to
this movement, says that the ministry of his day knew
no more of England than children of six years old.
This was not the case at the time of his death. In
1748 the book on L'Esprit des Lois had been
printed abroad without the author's permission, and
had to be brought surreptitiously into France; in
1755, when Montesquieu died, Louis XV. asserted
that such a man could not be replaced. It is rela-
tively unimportant to Montesquieu's reputation and
influence upon his times that his greatest work is more
an interpretation of the various laws-the obsolete as
* Brunetière, Etudes sur le 18ième siècle. Revue des Deux Mondes,
15th Feb. 1885, p. 829.
† Buckle, History of Civilisation. John Morley, Voltaire, iii.
Louis Vian, Montesquieu, sa Vie, ses Ouvrages. Droz, Histoire de
Louis XVI. i. 82.
INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH IDEAS.
69
well as those still in existence-more a physiology of
the state than an actual foundation of constitutional
law or a complete system of government. Neither
need we consider whether his conception of the state
is a false one when he takes it to be the creation of
personal despotism, or whether his leading thoughts
on the division of power refer more to the politics of
former days than to the philosophers and statesmen
of England. Montesquieu's special claim to distinction
lies much more in the fact that he brought his con-
temporaries to a knowledge of the necessity of fixed
laws and a steady government, and that in the cele-
brated sixth chapter of the eleventh book on the
English constitution he describes it as, in his opinion,
the happiest of all existing solutions of the problem
of political freedom. Montesquieu's views concerning
history, and the idea represented by him that the
quality of the physical nature of a country has dis-
tinct influence upon the character of its inhabitants,
and acts upon its habits, laws, and constitution; his
repeatedly-expressed conviction that a nation owes
something to its antecedents, that its past requires a
certain duty from it, and therefore that its future cannot
be shaped without taking this into consideration,—all
these doctrines, brought into notice by this clear and
superior mind, the immediate precursor and founder of
the new historical teaching of the eighteenth century,
at once exclude the thought that he aimed at a servile
imitation of foreign institutions. The practical aim
of his political teaching lay in the adaptation of
70
MADAME DE STAËL.
representative forms of government to the now his-
torically-established circumstances of his own country.
Nurtured in the highest circles of society and in the
Paris salons, it soon directed fashion, taste, and lite-
rature. One of the cleverest women of the day,
Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse,* Turgot's friend, only
expressed the universal opinion when she wrote,
"How can we sufficiently deplore the fact of living
under a government like ours? As far as concerns
a weak, unhappy creature such as I am, I would
rather be the most insignificant member of the Eng-
lish community than the King of Prussia." The
question arose as to what practical realisation this
teaching could find in the French monarchy, and the
answer was sought in the history of its ancient insti-
tutions.
Until the days of Richelieu the greater number of
the provinces forming the French nation had had
their own representative assemblies, for the imposition
of taxation and its distribution. Most of these as-
semblies were dissolved by that powerful minister,
and set aside in favour of what were called Inten-
dants, who governed, or rather misgoverned, the
thirty-two generalities into which the kingdom was
divided. Only a few provinces-Brittany, Burgundy,
Languedoc, part of Provence, Flanders, Artois, and
a few of the smaller Pyrenean districts-retained
their old mode of representation, and were called
* Mademoiselle l'Espinasse to Guilbert. Foncin, Ministère de
Turgot, p. 127.
THE STATES-GENERAL.
71
pays d'état, whilst the rest, deprived of all repre-
sentative form of government, were most inappro-
priately termed pays d'election.* Louis XIV. ratified
the absolute nature of Richelieu's work, and extended
the power of the intendants over life and death.
Noble and enlightened men directed all their efforts
in favour of the reform of this example of crowning
absolutism. Bois Guilbert and Vauban, Boulainvilliers
and Saint Simon, and finally Fénélon, branded the
rule of these privileged tyrants, who had become the
scourge of the population, and who, at the price of
draining the money and blood of their dependants in
the provinces to minister to the ends of the king's
treasury, had obtained exemption from punishment.
for their own extortions and those of their satellites.
Boulainvilliers, Saint Simon, and Fénélon had
already sought the redress of such miserable abuses
by calling together the States-General, which were
to be fed by the provincial assemblies. D'Argenson
and the Marquis Mirabeau required that Louis XV.
should reinstate the latter, and Mirabeau ventured
to remind the king that his father had already decided
on this. Still more important than the movement
in favour of the re-establishment of the provincial
assemblies was that for the revival of the representa-
tion of the states by the separate orders. The French
états-généraux had not met since 1614.
* Lavergne, Les Assemblées Provinciales, 2.
† Mirabeau, L'Ami des Hommes. D'Argenson, Considérations sur
le Gouvernement de France.
•
72
MADAME DE STAËL.
Necker's first attempt gradually and individually
to call together the provincial assemblies dates from
May, 1778. They were to decide on the imposition
or abolition of taxes, the making or repairing of
roads, the maintenance and improvement of farming
and industry. The intendants of the several pro-
vinces were to be permanent; Necker even added to
their powers, but in future they were not to resign
their post without the king's permission, and the new
provincial assemblies were to watch over their effi-
ciency. They were not to re-establish any former
conditions of government, but in most directions they
were to regulate matters in a way that suited the
surrounding necessities better than the antiquated
institutions of the Middle Ages. These, however, did
not exist in more than the few provinces we have
already named.
In place of election on the basis of a given income,
and without regard to rank, Necker went back to the
principle of representation of the three orders.
In the States-General, as well as in the represen-
tative provincial assemblies, each class worked sepa-
rately; and when the highest in rank-the nobility
and clergy--banded together they were always in
the majority against the Tiers-État. One province
only formed an exception to the rule. In Languedoc,
where all the members met in one hall and voted by
persons, the Tiers was composed of as many members
as the two other classes together. Fénélon had already
proposed the mode of election now chosen by Necker.
ITS UTILITY.
73
Not without due reflection did the king give his con-
sent to it.* The first attempt to introduce the new
institution was made in Berry, one of the smallest
and poorest provinces of the monarchy. The Assembly
consisted of forty-eight members-twelve of the nobi-
lity, twelve of the clergy, twelve representatives of
the towns-people, and twelve of the country pro-
prietors. The king chose sixteen deputies, who in
their turn elected the remaining thirty-two, and the
whole was presided over by the Archbishop of Bourges.
It was to meet together every second year for the
space of a month, and in the intermediate space of
time its decrees were to be carried out by a bureau
formed of seven members under a president. This
attempt, in the event of its success, was to serve as a
pattern for other similar institutions throughout the
land, and was to endure as long as "it so pleased the
king."
Its principal utility consisted in relieving the
taxation and in its just distribution, and in superin-
tending the road-making, carried out hitherto by the
hated bondage of the Corvée. It further assisted
charitable institutions, and encouraged trade and
industry. Necker's special innovation lay in the
appointment of a fourth party, by adding twelve
landed proprietors, that is, twelve peasants, to the
Tiers-État. The next provincial assembly was to be
introduced in Dauphiné in 1779. This province had
formerly had a representative assembly and lost it
Lavergne, Les Assemblées Provinciales, 18.
*
74
MADAME DE STAËL.
under Richelieu; it therefore raised difficulties, and
demanded that its ancient rights should be restored
instead of the new regulations offered to it.
Necker left the Government before the quarrel was
smoothed over: only in 1789 did it come to an end,
allowing the representatives of Dauphiné to fill an
important part in the events of the period.
The introduction of a provincial assembly in the
généralité of Montauban (now called Haute-Guienne,
after the old style) proved a success, although it was
a failure in 1780 at Moulins, for Bourbonnais, Niver-
nais, and La Marche.
The two provincial assemblies in Berry and in
Montauban lasted until 1786, and fully justified
Necker's expectation, "that an interest in the general
prosperity would thereby be aroused, and the people
secured by the newly awakened sense of prosperity
and confidence in the Government." * These useful
results are the brightest spots in the history of
Louis XVI.
As far as mortals may foresee, the development of
affairs in France would have been very different had
Necker been allowed time to widen and strengthen
the institution of provincial assemblies, but this was
not to be.
The American War annually cost the Treasury
about four hundred millions. These unheard-of sums
could not be raised without help from fresh sources.
* Necker, De l'Administration de Finances. Euvres complètes, iv.
21, 86.
NECKER OFFENDS THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES. 75
In the year 1780 there existed very nearly four
thousand posts, the purchase of which conferred
nobility. Most of these were small appointments at
Court, sold by those who held the highest positions
about the throne, and who unlawfully dealt in them
to their own profit and advantage. Necker proposed
that the king should abolish some and cut down
others, and this was carried out. The share of the
fermier général in indirect taxation was at the same
time lessened, and the number of financial appoint-
ments reduced. The further sum of fourteen millions,
which the altered and increased revenue of the ferme
générale brought in in 1780,* was only a drop in the
ocean compared to the requirements of the State, and
new means had to be found for obtaining credit.
Necker came back upon his favourite idea of winning
public opinion through a clear explanation of the
affairs of the State, and raised the hitherto impene-
trable veil which had covered the finances of the
French monarchy since the days of Richelieu. His
Compte-rendu, dedicated to the king, appeared in
January 1781, and was the greatest novelty in the
government of the ancient monarchy. In this finan-
cial report he indicated a surplus of ten millions in
the State revenue in excess of its expenditure, a dis-
appearance of deficit, and increased prosperity in the
land. The next result of this statement of accounts
was Necker's new loan, which brought more than two
* Auguste de Staël, Notice sur M. Necker. Euvres complètes, i.
VOL. I.
cxxi.
76
MADAME DE STAËL.
hundred and sixty-three millions in a few months.
His influence from a moral standpoint was no less
remarkable. The detailed statement of existing abuses
pledged the Government to remove them, and de-
manded the support of public opinion to help the
king to carry out the work of reformation required
by justice. This support alone could lend him the
necessary strength to carry it through, but at the
same time it forced him to adhere to it. The Compte-
rendu has long been proved erroneous from a financial
point of view. The statement Necker produced had
reference merely to the ordinary revenue and expen-
diture, and excluded the extraordinary burdens im-
posed by the war.* Neither was Necker's budget that
of any particular year, but a sort of fiction, an average
budget, giving the regular state of the income and
expenditure during the course of a year, but ignoring
the possible deficiencies, extraordinary expenditure,
or the current deficit. Moreover, neither the necessary
administrative information, nor any system resembling
the modern system of accounts, existed at that time
to facilitate an exact statement of the income and ex-
penditure. Thus the State revenue in 1781 amounted
to four hundred and thirty millions, whereas Necker's
return reckoned them only as two hundred and sixty
millions, because no reliable account of the other
sources of income had been given. It was simply
taken for granted that they had attained the maximum
* Necker, De la Révolution Française. Euvres complètes, x.
229.
HE PUBLISHES HIS COMPTE-RENDU.
77
average returns.* Necker's appreciation of the power
of public opinion was visible in everything he wrote,
and in all his dealings. His friends' enthusiasm might
deceive him as to the extent of the opposition which
had arisen against him, but he was perfectly aware
of its existence. In the Provinces † the highest aris-
tocracy willingly helped on his reforms, but the nobility
at Court forgave Necker as little as it had tolerated
Turgot, and continued in the practice of the most
pernicious abuses as if they were inherited rights.
At such a time the queen's influence was not to be
undervalued; she remained constant to Necker under
every circumstance. The fact that it was to her in-
fluence that the two ministers, De Castries and Ségur,
owed their portfolios in the War and Marine depart-
ments, made it all the more difficult for Maurepas to
forgive her. Vergennes, who equally opposed all
innovations, shared his antipathy; the old minister
required and obtained a secret memorial from the
latter addressed to the king, wherein it was set forth
as highly dangerous "to leave the most complicated
adminstration of the kingdom in the hands of a re-
publican and a Protestant." The peace maintained
entirely by the exertions of a so much wiser minister
was thereby threatened. Meanwhile there appeared
a newly-written pamphlet against the Compte-rendu.
The author of it filled the post of treasurer to the
Comte d'Artois. In those days the attacks of the
Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. i. 294, &c.
† Lavergne, Les Assemblées Provinciales.
*
78
MADAME DE STAËL.
press were more felt than they now are, and more-
over Necker's whole strength lay in the respect and
confidence of the public. He therefore demanded
proof of the slander, and, as the inquiry before three
of his colleagues resulted in his complete exoneration,
he then demanded the right of attending the minis-
terial deliberations. In his own account of his first
ministry he does not attempt to conceal how bitterly
he was mortified by the attacks of his enemies, and
by the doubts cast on the purity of his intentions, nor
did he attempt to conceal it from his wife. To her
it seemed unbearable that in place of the universal
recognition he so well deserved he should allow the
most unjust and unworthy accusations to go forth
against him, and she was led in consequence to com-
mit the greatest possible tactical mistake. Without
acquainting Necker with her intention, she went to
Maurepas, who, as Madame de Staël writes, "In any
exhibition of real feeling only saw an opportunity for
exposing the weak point,"* and she demanded that
the pamphlets attacking her husband should be sup-
pressed. This enabled the minister thoroughly to
gauge how surely those arrows, mostly directed by
himself, had gone home.
home. He now went a step further,
and not only refused the entry to the ministerial
council demanded by Necker, but added the insulting
suggestion that Necker could overcome the objection
by changing his religion, and lastly he begged his
colleague to withdraw his resignation. Filled with
* Madame de Staël, Notice sur la Vie privée de Monsieur Necker.
NECKER MAKES STIPULATIONS.
79
the desire to continue in his course of usefulness,
Necker did not hold the new proposals as final. Hẹ
requested an examination into the army and navy
expenditure, the dismissal of the refractory Intendant
of Moulins, and the forcible introduction of the edict
calling together a Provincial Assembly for the Bour-
bonnais, which the Parlement in Paris had rejected.
Maurepas refused this also, and Necker now wrote
to the king that with heartfelt regret he must part
from him.* His resignation dates from May 19, 1781.
Turgot had died two months earlier, and only in the
following November, Maurepas, who had been an
invalid for years, died also. There would not have
been long to wait for his death. Necker's plan of
government never replaced Turgot's carefully thought
out and compact system, resting as it did on the
firmest principles. He chiefly gained his political
experience at the expense of the State. But he was
an administrator, the like of whom was not to be
found in France at that time.
•
A united ministry headed by Necker would have
been the best choice for the monarchy in 1781.
Curiously enough the queen had a suspicion of this
at the time. Her correspondence with Maria Theresa
does not, it is true, definitely mention him, but she
repeatedly expresses her displeasure with reference to
Maurepas and Vergennes, whose attitude during the
Bavarian war of succession showed but little defer-
Euvres complètes, i.
* Auguste de Staël, Notice sur M. Necker.
clxxvi. Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. i. 302.
80
MADAME DE STAËL.
ence to her sympathies for her country and family,
and against whom, moreover, her mother and Joseph
II. continuously endeavoured to arouse the influence
of the young queen. * But her partizanship for
Necker, to whom she herself conceded the diminution
of her courtly state,† contributed none the less to
hasten his fall, just as a year before her dislike had
contributed to that of Turgot. At Versailles, during
the space of an hour, she endeavoured to persuade
Necker to withdraw his resignation. It was getting
dark towards the end of their interview, and he did
not notice the tears in the queen's eyes; later on he
declared that had he done so he would not have had
the courage to withstand her. His withdrawal from
public life brought about a reaction in his favour, in
the face of which the abuse of his opponents was
silenced; men forgot to criticise in remembering the
good he had worked or desired. Catherine II. (who
alluded to the finances of the most Christian king as
"une matière tout-à-fait dégoutante"), the Queens
of Naples and of Poland, begged him to assume the
management of their affairs.
The King of Sardinia wrote, "I wish my people
deserved to be governed by him." Joseph II. did
not remain behind the rest; he wrote to Mercy that
* Arneth, Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette. Lettres, 1778.
Correspondance Secrète entre Marie Thérèse et Mercy, 1778.
† Idem.
privée.
Madame de Staël, Sur le Caractère de M. Necker et sur sa Vie
OPINION IN EUROPE REGARDING NECKER.
you to
81
""
he had retained the friendliest recollection of Necker
ever since he had met him in Paris in 1778, and at
the same time he commanded his ambassador to
remind Necker of this interview, and to assure him of
the esteem his character and capabilities had inspired
in him.* In the latter days of his official position
Maria Theresa gave the Neckers a very flattering
token of her regard, "As you often meet Necker,
wrote the empress to Mercy, "I wish
to convey
to him the favourable impression I have of his capacity,
and to add that I always read the accounts of his
financial operations with much interest, and that I
am convinced that we might adapt them with profit
to our own, although they are not in such a critical
condition as those of France. You might at the same
time inform Madame Necker that some years ago the
Genevese painter Liotard was in Vienna, and that I
expressed a wish to see his pictures; one that espe-
cially pleased me was the portrait of a very good-
looking young person in a pretty attitude, holding a
book in her hand. I took such a fancy to the picture
that I bought it. It is Madame Necker's portrait,
and I often look at it with pleasure: when Liotard
was last here he regretted that he had let the picture
go, and begged me to allow him to copy it, to which I
consented, but I retained the original, which is now
in my study."+ "The Neckers," replied the ambas-
* Geffroy et Arneth, Marie Antoinette, Correspondance secrète de
Marie Thérèse et du Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, iii. 405, note. Letter
of March 4, 1780.
† Geffroy et Arneth, Marie Antoinette, Correspondance secrète de
VOL. I.
G
82
MADAME DE STAËL.
sador, "deserve this distinguished mark of favour: the
husband for his unimpeachable honesty and talents,
the wife for the impersonification of every virtue."*
When, however, Madame Necker expressed a na-
tural wish to possess a copy of the letter from the
empress, Mercy refused it to her, and the empress
approved his refusal, "that," as she expressed it,
"too great ostentation might not be engendered." †
Necker himself made no secret of the grief it was to
him to be interrupted in his course of usefulness; he
writes that he had not sufficient vanity to simulate
indifference, and, when looking through his papers,
the sheet upon which he had drawn up his plans for
the future caused him a flood of tears. Very few
occupations had any charm for one who had given his
mind to public life, and who had become so much
attached to it. Country life and its solitude could
alone console him. Assurances of general esteem and
sympathy followed him, not only from the capital
but from the whole of France. People flocked to
St. Ouen to honour the fallen minister in his retire-
ment. Public opinion, which he so frequently recog-
nised and referred to, had on this occasion justified
his confidence; whilst it approved of his transactions
and his views and vindicated the past, it seemed, in
like manner, to guarantee the future: only he over-
Marie Thérèse et du Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, iii. 405. Maria
Theresa to Mercy, 3 March, 1780.
* Idem.
† Idem.
De l'Administration des Finances. Euvres complètes, iv. 98.
THE FRANCO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE.
83
looked the fact that even whilst turning its approving
gaze towards him this public opinion had itself
moved on.
We have already alluded to the part Montesquieu
played in the history of the eighteenth century, and
to the political development upon which his theory
rested, pointing convincingly to the example of Eng-
land as the land in which it was more fully carried
out than in any other. There alone had Montesquieu's
axioms been corroborated, "that the laws must be
determined by custom," and "what this can deter-
mine should never require to be enforced by the law."
His definition of freedom, as consisting "of the right
to do everything allowed by the law," precluded any
dangerous experiments by its cool firmness. It well
represented the mind of the man who declared that
he desired nothing except "that the earth should
continue to revolve on her axis," and who found
compensation for all the chances of fate in the con
sciousness of true merit.
The treaty between Louis XVI. and the United
States, now at war with England, was signed on the
6th February. It was a reluctant tribute to public
opinion on the part of Maurepas. For years public
opinion had sided with the American colonies in their
struggle with the mother-country.
Admiration for the English Government had not
modified the natural prejudice against the English
themselves, and it only required encouragement from
outside to fan the dormant hatred so long subsisting
G 2
84
MADAME DE STAËL.
99 *
between the two nations into a vivid flame. In this
respect there was little difference between the dispo-
sition of the educated upper classes and that of the
people, and it was by no means confined to France.
Marie Antoinette gave expression to the popular
opinion when she wrote to her mother, "Just as
Frederick the Great is a bad neighbour to Austria,
so are the English to the French; the sea has never
hindered them from injuring us in every way.
The sentiments of the empress did not lessen this
apprehension. When the Emperor Joseph's journey
to London was frustrated in June 1780 by a rising of
the population of London directed against the Catholics,
and known as "the Gordon Riots," she wrote to her
daughter, "This then is the much-vaunted freedom-
the pattern constitution; without morals or religion
nothing avails." In Germany curses were invoked
upon the subsidiary treaty with England, and the
news that German troops had been taken prisoners
by Washington in 1776 was received with exultation.†
Diderot found ways and means, in a treatise concern-
ing Seneca, to forsake the position he had taken up
with regard to the American colonies that he might
advocate a war with England. The sympathies of
his countrymen were easily enough won now that
the
cry for liberty no longer had any connection with
England, but, on the contrary, was raised in opposi-
tion to her, and now that the American colonies
* Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette, May 17, 1773.
† Niebuhr, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Revolution, i. 75.
DANGERS OF THE ALLIANCE WITH AMERICA. 85
replied to the demands they had found unbearable
by their Declaration of Independence. At this junc-
ture French enthusiasm was aroused; ovations were
prepared for Franklin. The young La Fayette was
followed across the sea, and the king and his ministers
were forced to go to war. It now seemed as if liberty
was only obtainable by means of uproar and by oppo-
sition to monarchical rule.
Both Turgot and Necker deprecated war with
England, seeing that any participation therein would
certainly lead to utter confusion in the finances.
Their opinion was however unheeded, the national
feeling was in favour of revenging the wrongs of 1763,
and above all the loss of Canada. The result of this
alliance between the oldest monarchy and the youngest
republic was gradually to make itself felt upon home
politics. The military and diplomatic results were
by no means so important a sequence of the French
intervention as the impression brought home by the
returning warriors.
It is now proved beyond contention that at the
bottom of these impressions lay one of the most
destructive and fatal misunderstandings ever chro-
nicled, contributing more than any other to unavoid-
able revolution.
When the youth of France went forth to this
struggle as to a feast it imagined that in the rising
of the colonies it recognised revolt against the existing
state of things, reaction against monarchy, enthusiasm
86
MADAME DE STAËL.
for republican conditions; in one word, an awakening
of democracy.
In reality very little if any of this was to be found.
The fundamental principle that no one should be
taxed without having a voice in the matter, which
was the starting-point for the conception of political
liberty, was entertained by the subjects of the British
Crown, across the seas and at home, in an equal
degree. The conduct of the English Government had
impugned this theory, and therefore challenged op-
position. Not until long after the outbreak of hos-
tilities was the thought of an entire separation from
the mother country entertained by American states-
As late as in the year 1774, Franklin,
Washington, and even Jefferson, who was of a much
more revolutionary tone of mind, could truthfully
assert that it was not the wish of the colonies to
men.
separate from England. Chastellux emphatically
remarks, that the first difficulty encountered by the
American statesmen was that of inducing the people
to give up a monarchical government, and he adds,
that although the new constitution was democratic it
could do nothing to change the aristocratic tone of
the government of the nation.*
The delegates of
the foremost states of the union in 1775 spoke to the
same effect. Their original aim was to redress past
wrongs, not to establish their independence; they
* Chastellux, Voyages dans l'Amérique du Nord (English trans-
lation), i. 331, and ii. 177. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth
Century, iii. 412, 414.
WHAT AMERICA WANTED.
87
were still the descendants of the Puritans of old, who
had sorrowfully torn themselves from their homes for
conscience' sake. Political freedom was as holy and
solemn a matter to the descendants of the Pilgrim
Fathers as religious freedom had been to them in
1629. Without it there was no security of property,
life was valueless, and conscience lost its hold. Their
resistance had the same origin in manly and Christian
conviction, they held firmly to laws, customs, and
descent, and they only decided to separate from the
mother country when forced to do so. Only when
blood was once spilt, and the die cast, did the un-
avoidable stream of revolution, mingle in their resist-
ance; and, according to one of the best judges, the
American revolution, like most others, was the work
of an energetic minority forcing the majority step
by step into a position whence no escape and no
return was possible.
Once separation was decided upon, to which the
unity of the English people eventually fell a sacrifice,
it again became evident how little of the spirit of
revolution characterised the statesmen of the new
nation. Unlike the French, who in 1789, when the
Government was overthrown, seemed possessed by
the desire to begin everything at the beginning, and
to show no deference to any of the institutions sanc-
tioned by time and experience, the fathers of the
American Union unhesitatingly referred to the na-
tional constitution, against which they had only lately
* Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, iii. 443.
88
MADAME DE STAËL.
risen. Beyond the English constitution the only
authority carrying any weight in America was that
of Montesquieu, and to his influence may be attri-
buted the most original and one of the most influ-
ential institutions of the United States government,
that of their highest court of law, in which his doc-
trine concerning the distribution of power is carried
out and perfected. In all its former and substantial
attributes the American government is an off-shoot
of the British government as it was in operation in
the space of time between 1760 and 1787, and it
certainly interpreted it in a conservative and not in
a radical sense.* The former subjects of George III.
had no king to set at their head, neither did they
desire one. No dynasty sprang from the Union, but,
as far as concerned the overwhelming majority, the
struggle it undertook against King George III. and
his Parliament certainly arose from no antagonism
to monarchy any more than it arose from opposition
to constitutional system or to parliamentary govern-
Their president is the copy of an English
monarch, with all the attributes of power enjoyed by
such until the year 1789, and which, by a curious
coincidence, began to be restricted in England at the
very time when the American executive came into
operation, March 4th, 1789. The temporarily-chosen
president at the White House, although only there
for a definite and limited space of time, exercises far
ment.
* Sir Henry Maine, The Constitution of the United States. Quarterly
Review, January, 1884.
THE NATURE OF ITS CONSTITUTION.
89
greater authority than any of the constitutional princes
in Europe. In the organisation of their representa-
tion the conservative sense of the American statesmen
is clearly observable, and it always favours liberty
rather than equality. Not only do they adopt the
system of the Two Chambers, but their Senate is one
of the most powerful political corporations, and above
all it is permanent. It repudiates equality by the
mode of its composition, although, on the other hand,
it guarantees equal rights for every State in the
Union, including the rights of the lesser States. The
smaller and more insignificant are represented by the
same number of deputies in the Senate as the greater
and more populous; and in the same way as the pre-
sident is a representation of the English king, the
Chamber of Deputies represents the Lower House as
it existed in England in the eighteenth century. Its
privileges are much less extensive than those adopted
by its English prototype in the last hundred years;
it has remained a merely legislative assembly, whereas
England is, in point of fact, ruled by the Lower
House. The much-prized and envied equality of the
citizen and the politician promised by the United
States constitution was the equality of a dominant
race, which, with the hierarchical Anglo-Saxon feel-
ing, knew even now how to defend and hold fast the
social position which adds weight in public life. This
equality was compatible, in the wide sphere of the
Union, with the extirpation of the outlawed Indian
and with the slavery of the imported negro.
90
MADAME DE STAËL.
As the United States constitution even now appears
to be the ideal of democratic government to super-
ficial observers, we can scarcely wonder if Washing-
ton's French friends, with their newly-acquired poli-
tical opinions, formed an erroneous idea of the real
nature of it in their blind republican partizanship;
they mistook the wings for the stage-the prologue
for the play-the proclamation of the rights of the
people for the kernel and substance of the constitu-
tion.
In their thoughtless enthusiasm they imagined that
these ordinary propositions meant the glorification of
natural laws after the doctrines of Rousseau, instead
of a departure from the absolute Anglo-Saxon rights
of the people, which was the actual state of the case.
They cared not for establishing the rights of American
citizens, but only those of the human race: the
rhetorical embellishments of the lawgivers, whose
principles accommodated themselves to the mainten-
ance of slavery, were set aside in favour of absolute
doctrines, in which no mercy for the existing state of
things was to be found. Those amongst American
statesmen who were of a republican turn of mind
strengthened this error; Franklin made use of it in
Paris, with crafty calculation, in favour of his poli-
tical aims, which were in truth of a very practical
nature; and Jefferson, who drew up the "Declaration
of Independence," wrote with a satisfaction easily
understood, "The American revolution appears to
have awakened the thoughtful section of the French
WARNING VOICES.
91
Authors, rich
people out of the sleep of despotism.
middle-class people, the young generation amongst
the nobility, were now found ready to follow the
teaching of sound reason and justice for all." * Less-
ing, the great pioneer of freedom, warned the Germans
in the midst of the tumult against those "who wanted
to put out the lights before daylight."†
When Gustavus III. of Sweden received news of
the French alliance with America he wrote to the
Count Creutz in Paris that the behaviour of the
French ministry appeared alike to forsake the prin-
ciples of justice, the interests of the nation, and the
maxims upheld by the Government during so many
centuries.
"I cannot admit," he continued, in the fulness
of his kingly dignity "that it can be right to support
rebels against their king; the example which endea-
vours to upset all the restrictions of power will only
be too readily followed."
"My business is to be royalist," said Joseph II.
during his stay in the French capital, and when
pressed to express an opinion on the subject by the
American insurgents. But even his warnings were
useless. On the second triumphal return of La
Fayette, Marie Antoinette conveyed his wife in her
own carriage to meet him, and the Parisian Parlement
* Jefferson, Complete Works, Correspondence, ii. 67, 535. 1786
and 1787.
† Lessing, Dialog Ernst and Falk, v. quoted by Niebuhr, 16.
‡ Geizer, Gustave III. Nachgelassene Papiere, ii. 111.
92
MADAME DE STAËL.
imagined it could prepare no more gratifying spec-
tacle for the Czarewitch Paul than the sitting in
which it offered honorary places in their midst to the
heroic companions-in-arms of George Washington.
In more than one instance these distinctions were well
earned. If La Fayette had misunderstood the spirit
in America, he understood that of the new France all
the better; it was he who gave expression to its
inmost thoughts when he later on declared that,
saturated with the American tone of thought, he had
always been, and would always continue to be, an
advocate of equality.
Necker was again Minister when this revolution was
completed.
Whilst the young republic over the seas took the
English constitution as its pattern, and chose Mon-
tesquieu's political doctrine as its rule, monarchical
France took the social contract in hand, and familiar-
ized itself with Rousseau's teaching concerning the
sovereignty of the people.
Nothing indicates that Necker would have been
quicker than those around him to realize that the
struggle for liberty tended towards equality, and that
the conception of reform tended towards revolution.
He found however that public opinion, to which he
attached so much importance, had reached this point
of view when it once more placed him at the head of
affairs after his seven years' retirement.
CHAPTER III.
Anne Necker and Bonstetten-First acquaintance-Madame Necker's
Educational System - Gibbon-Mademoiselle Necker and her
Father-Her first literary efforts-Difficulties as to Marriage-
Coppet-Necker inconsolable on loss of position-Notes from
1783 and 1785 The Swedes in France-Prince Gustavus
becomes King
Count John Axel Fersen-Baron von Staël-
Holstein-Matrimonial negociations-Portrait of Mademoiselle
Necker.
DURING this transition from riches and consideration
to influence and power, and back again to the com-
parative quiet of a simple private life, the Neckers'
only child grew up; and it seemed as if no mere
ordinary career could be in store for one so gifted
and possessing such extraordinary talents.
Anne Louise Germaine, whose third name recalls
the old German home, and in a manner foretells her
future destiny, spent a very happy childhood. The
first person of any note who mentions her is her god-
mother Madame de Verménoux, who, when Necker
and his wife betook themselves in 1770 to Spa, the
fashionable resort of all real and fancied invalids in
the eighteenth century, used to go and see the little
girl, aged four, at the Château de Madrid, which the
94
MADAME DE STAËL.
Neckers at that time were in the habit of hiring for
the summer; and wrote to the mother that Germaine
had won not only her own admiration but that of all
who saw her, amongst others that of various old
gentlemen, including an abbé.
At the same period Madame Geoffrin begged the
Neckers' acceptance of a specially comfortable arm-
chair, and another of equal size followed very shortly
for the daughter of the house, "that she might not
have recourse to blows to obtain possession of their
chair. Both the chairs, I may add," she writes, "come
from the sale of Philemon and Baucis." *
The next celebrity who especially took an interest
in the child was Madame d'Houdetot, a neighbour
at St. Ouen, who used to make it her regular resort
when Necker and his wife were not there. In her
letters to the child's mother she speaks of her as if
she were her own, praises her merry ways and her
wonderful eyes, and reassures her parents as to a
trifling irregularity in her growth, as she says that a
slight rise in the right shoulder is only due to the
constant use of the right arm; and she had therefore
charged her attendants to be careful in making her
use her left hand.
To this circumstance is attached an anecdote in
which Victor de Bonstetten was the victim.
After a long residence in Holland at the Leyden
university and then in England, where he had com-
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, i. 121, 122, and
ii. 26.
ANNE NECKER AND BONSTETTEN.
95
pleted his studies, the studious young man, now five-
and-twenty years old, came to Paris, where he spent
the greater part of the year 1770, and amongst other
friends found Madame Necker, late Mademoiselle
Curchod, and her husband, who received him with the
utmost hospitality. On one occasion whilst visiting
them at St. Ouen he went for a stroll in the park. A
sharp blow was suddenly dealt him with a stick, as
sudden as it was unexpected. Turning towards his
assailant he discovered the little four-year-old Anne
Germaine, who satisfactorily explained to him that
she was recommended to use her left hand as much
as possible.
This commenced a friendship between the two,
only terminated by death.* Bonstetten has left us
details which are of interest on other subjects; amongst
other things they comfort succeeding generations
with the fact that the salons in the eighteenth cen-
tury were not always entertaining.
"On the appearance of a new piece Madame
Geoffrin, Madame Necker, or Mademoiselle de l'Espi-
nasse, are visited, and whatever is pronounced upon
it by Diderot, d'Alembert, Marmontel, or Thomas, is
treasured up. Visits are paid the same evening; at
least sixty people are encountered to whom the same
thing is repeated. These sixty people do the same
thing in their turn, the result being that the follow-
ing day judgment is given and promulgated through-
out Paris. The decision of men of taste is in reality
* Simond, Voyage en Suisse, i. 269.
96
MADAME DE STAËL.
public opinion, divined by instinct by those of
superior discernment. It becomes modified and per-
fected in passing from lip to lip. The necessity of
daily pronouncing an opinion on the last new thing in
art and literature obliges each family circle to include
a bel-esprit, or some one who will furnish it with an
opinion or judgment on every subject that may arise.
These bels-esprits form among themselves an invisible
aristocracy which goes on descending in scale by im-
perceptible gradations. The heads have their tribunals,
the subalterns their departments.
"If any one ventured to speak of himself amidst
these surroundings he would be thought unbearable
by the rest, for no one in Paris takes the slightest
interest in the affairs of his fellow-creatures; the first
care must always be to increase the self-approbation
of others, and never to forget that if they appear to
interest themselves in you it is only out of politeness,
and on condition that you should also understand it
in this light and not take advantage of it. To these
causes may be attributed the pleasant style of inter-
course and the interchange of trifles and commonplaces
which produce the unusually agreeable women, and the
really few good mothers and wives.”
Comparing the state of things in France and Eng-
land, Bonstetten decided unhesitatingly in favour of
the latter. He considered that in France the author's
intelligence and general knowledge developed new
and striking ideas, but possessed very little method.
In England it was just the reverse; nothing could
FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH BONSTEITEN.
97
be better than to clothe the ideas there originated or
brought over from Geneva in French forms; for the
Englishman begins by laying in a store of sound
reason, whereas the Frenchman reserves this to the
very last, and often dies without having attained it at
all. In France all depends on interest; in England
merit decides everything. The English strive to serve
their country; the French to secure a few influential
persons; in England abuses are the exception, in
France they are the rule.* In letters to his friends
Bonstetten gives pleasant descriptions of the country-
life in France; as for instance, in the Château de
Rocheguyon belonging to the Duchesse d'Enville,
where every kind of amusement and distraction was
provided-" carriages, hacks, hunters, hounds, tennis,
billiards, theatre, concert-room; the hostess and her
daughter-in-law only desiring that their guests should
be thoroughly amused." A library of fifteen thousand
volumes helped towards this, and the young Swiss
gives the palm to the inhabitants of this château for
personal simplicity, purity of morals, nobility of
thought, and intellectual taste.†
Unenlivened by the love of hunting and shooting
peculiar to the old French nobility, the life at St. Ouen
was much quieter, the tone was always more serious
and studied, and the presence of the little girl was in
truth the only diversion. Her picture, the work of
some unknown hand, represents her as rather dark
* A. Steinlen, Charles Victor de Bonstetten, pp. 75, 78.
† Idem, pp. 80, 81.
VOL. I.
H
98
MADAME DE STAËL.
in complexion, with lively irregular features and the
promise of mind and virtue shining even then out of
her large dark eyes.
Although at a subsequent period Madame Necker
tried in vain to keep her daughter from the influences
of J. J. Rousseau, she began like the rest of the women
of her day. "I bring up my daughter to be like
Emile and not like Sophie," she wrote in 1768, "and
hitherto Nature seems more attractive in the child
than any art could be."* She wished as much as
possible herself to direct the child's education, espe-
cially as Necker's duties obliged him to follow the
court to its various places of residence and left more
time at her disposal. "During thirteen of the best
years of my life," she wrote on this subject to her
husband, "you know that I have never let my daughter
be out of my sight; I have taught her several lan-
guages, especially her own, and endeavoured to cul-
tivate her memory and understanding by means of
the best books. During your stay at Versailles or at
Fontainebleau I went alone to the country with her;
there I used to walk with her, read with her, and
pray with her. When she was unwell I encouraged
the efforts of her doctor by my care and nursing;
and I have since been told that she used often to ex-
aggerate her cough in case she should be deprived of
my loving care. In one word, I sought to nurture
and encourage every gift of nature, as I hoped to im-
* Golowkin, Lettres recueillies en Suisse, p. 359.
MADAME NECKER'S MODE OF EDUCATION. 99
prove her disposition and as I had thrown my whole
pride into it.”*
She strove in her educational method to lead her
daughter's habits and disposition in the straight path
of duty and industry. Highly educated, for a woman
of her time and station, she might even be considered
learned. Therefore she did not hesitate to lay a
severe burden of work upon the gifted girl, and to
awaken her interest in every possible branch of learn-
ing, which in those days was far in advance of the
plan of education then in vogue for young ladies.
She hoped by this means that she should best be
able to combat the influence of certain materialistic
ideas, and by a severely methodical education to pre-
pare the way for the decided supremacy of religious
views; but she went to work like many others who
are in the habit of living by strict rule themselves,
and who forget to reckon with individual require-
ments and youth.
She
This restraint was specially likely to be almost
unbearable in the case of Mademoiselle Necker.
was more than ordinarily lively, straightforward, and
sensitive, craving for love as well as praise and encou-
ragement. Even as a child her love for her father
was a curious mixture of merriment and irritability,
easily turned to tears, out of all proportion to her
years.
She was hardly eleven years old when her mother
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 35.
Jork
H 2
100
MADAME DE STAËL.
selected Mademoiselle Huber, a young relation from
Geneva, as her governess. Mademoiselle Huber, who
was subsequently known as the beautiful and accom-
plished Madame Rilliet-Huber, remained the young
girl's intimate friend. Mademoiselle Huber describes
their first meeting, giving prominence to the impression
made upon her by her pupil's grace and versatility
of expression, which almost approached eloquence.
"We never used to play like children," she con-
tinues; "she at once inquired about my hours of
instruction and the various languages I was fluent
in, and whether I often went to the theatre. When
I replied that I had only been two or three times
at the latter she expressed her astonishment, and,
promising that we should very shortly go and see
a comedy, she added that after each play we must
write down our recollections of it and what we
thought of it, as this was her habit. We also pro-
mised to write to each other every morning. We
then went into the drawing-room. Beside Madame
Necker's arm-chair there was a small wooden chair,
upon which her daughter had to sit quite still and
upright. Then a few old gentlemen came in who
seemed to take the utmost pleasure in amusing her."
Whilst still a child Mademoiselle Necker wrote
sketches and studies of character, according to the
prevailing fashion, and there soon followed verses,
essays, and plays. Before she was fifteen years old
she looked over a copy of L'Esprit des Lois, and
made marginal notes. A short treatise by her on the
GIBBON.
101
Edict of Nantes caused the Abbé Raynal to express
a wish to incorporate it in the next edition of his
History of the Indies. After the Compte-rendu was
published she handed an anonymous composition on
the subject to Necker, who, however, recognised his
daughter's style of writing.
Her own originality enabled her to withstand the
severe educational system to which she was sub-
jected.
On the occasion of one of Gibbon's visits to Paris
in 1776 Necker and his wife expressed a wish that
this clever and distinguished individual might remain
among them. Thereupon the little maid of ten years
old proposed to her mother, in all good faith, that
she should marry the shapeless celebrity, and by this
desperate step secure him to the family for ever, for
in her restless, active nature the development of the
heart kept pace with that of the mind.
Thus she passionately loved Mademoiselle Huber;
the excitement of meeting distinguished men would
bring tears to her eyes and make her heart beat; the
books she read transported her into another world.
Her description is well known of the impression made
on her by Richardson, the greatest novelist of the
day. "The elopement of Clarissa," she says, was
the principal event of my youth." Her first and best
biographer, Madame Necker de Saussure, says she was
always young but never a child.
66
"Here blossom the joys of your life," wrote Madame
d'Houdetot to Madame Necker; "strive to enjoy the
་
102
MADAME DE STAËL.
1
consolation of bringing them to perfection; none of
her sympathetic charm is lost upon me."* Unfor-
tunately Madame Necker was not able to find these
joys in the same way as her friend; she guided her
daughter's education with the same painful conscien-
tiousness with which she watched over her own
improvement and endeavoured to fulfil the most
trifling duties of her position. She exhausted all the
cares and anxieties of her motherly calling, but passed
its joys and compensations almost coldly by.
During the childhood of Anne Germaine, long-
winded treatises upon style, grammatical remarks
upon Emile, allusions to conversations with Buffon
or Thomas, are to be found among her mother's
writings; she hardly ever alludes to her daughter,
about whom it would have been infinitely more inter-
esting to hear something beyond remarks as to the
perils of a Parisian atmosphere for young girls.
Under ordinary circumstances an education on the
system of Madame Necker would probably have come
to the desired result; in this instance, however, she
encountered an element which defied all her theories,
and this element was inborn genius. Madame Necker
started from the notion that everything could be learnt,
and that study was the principal thing. She held,
rightly enough, that where the first period in life is
not usefully filled up, the deficiency can never be
made up in after-years.†
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 28.
† Madame Necker, Mélanges, ii. 337
MADAME NECKER'S EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 103
The daughter was, however, too original to follow
the inspirations of others without the utmost difficulty;
whilst she replaced perseverance and application by
the most remarkably quick intelligence.
In default of information, we are unable rightly to
estimate the positive amount of knowledge Made-
moiselle Necker owed to her educational years; from
later events and indications we may, however, deduce
that she knew sufficient Latin to read Tacitus with her
son, but it is further chronicled that it only needed a
few words of the text, the meaning of which was in
truth sometimes misunderstood, to start her on some
clever dissertation which often led her far from the
original subject.*
*
When in 1792 she went to England for the first
time, she only spoke English very incorrectly; and,
although she had diligently studied German before
her arrival in Weimar, everything testifies that she
understood it imperfectly; but in after-years she
learnt it thoroughly.
A century earlier, educated women in France
knew a great deal more; amongst others, Madame de
Sévigné had thoroughly learnt Latin, she spoke
Spanish and Italian fluently, and knew enough philo-
sophy and theology to keep pace with the education
of her day, and to form an opinion on the principal
controversies of the moment. At least, an inde-
pendent judgment in the times of Arnauld and
* Bonstetten, Letters to Frederick Brun, edited by F. Matthison,
i..181.
104
MADAME DE STAËL.
Pascal, Nicole and Bossuet-and the celebrated Mar-
quise had hers-proves as much positive knowledge
and intelligence as the fact of being able to form a
more or less authoritative opinion upon Montesquieu
and Rousseau in the days of Mademoiselle Necker.
Neither at that time, nor at a subsequent period, did
she pretend to be a learned woman in the real sense
of the word, but she knew a great deal, read and
taught herself incessantly, and in the course of time
touched upon most of the problems which occupied
the intellectual, artistic, and political circles of her
generation. Madame Necker de Saussure does not fail
to remark that the superiority of Madame de Staël was
a great and natural phenomenon much more than it
was the result of acquired knowledge.*
"The education of early youth," she remarks, "left
very little trace in her case." She certainly offered
no opposition to the efforts of her mother, but her
health suddenly gave cause for serious anxiety; and
the decision of Tronchin, called in by the parents in
their distress, put a final veto on Madame Necker's
system of education, as he prescribed a residence at
St. Ouen, continuous exercise in the fresh air, and a
complete cessation of all mental exertion. The poet-
ical and imaginative capabilities, which had hitherto
been repressed, now began to develope themselves.
The two young girls, Anne Germaine and her friend
Mademoiselle Huber, roamed all over the park and
* Madame Necker de Saussure, Notice sur le Caractère et les Écrits
de Madame de Staël.
MADEMOISELLE NECKER AND HER FATHER. 105
gardens at St. Ouen (sometimes dressed as nymphs),
busied themselves with music and song, composed
poetry, read poems to each other, and even acted
dramas or plays of their own composition. But the
Neckers' salon was in reality the training-school,
which furnished an opportunity for the interchange of
opinions with interesting and clever men, broadened
the ideas of the young girl, formed her taste, and
soon developed her knowledge of men and the world,
without which her extraordinary gifts would never
have been brought to fruition.
This change in her mode of life and in her oc-
cupations added in a decided and considerable
degree to her intimacy with her father. His atten-
tion being no longer devoted to the affairs of the
state, he could now turn to his daughter; he dis-
covered a disposition in her which was already in
sympathy with his own, and she put forth every
effort to please him. She felt he understood her
better than her mother, although he neither praised
nor encouraged her. They had many traits of
character and intellectual qualities in common, and
particularly an exquisite sense of the ridiculous.
Mademoiselle Necker owed it to him that straight-
forwardness and simplicity were essential to her.
He at once detected anything affected or studied,
but was ever ready for a joke. One morning when
Bonstetten was their guest, Mademoiselle Necker had
tried in vain to attract her father's attention at break-
fast. Her mother, who regarded all these pranks some-
106
MADAME DE STAËL.
:
what severely, was called out of the room on house-
hold matters: the instant she shut the door behind
her, the daughter's table-napkin flew at her father,
who until then had been sitting gravely opposite her.
As if he had been expecting it, he caught it, bound it
round his head, and began to dance round the table
with Germaine until the sound of returning footsteps
fell on their ears, when they both hastened back to
their chairs like truant school-children, forgetting to
observe that they were betrayed by the father's wig,
which was put on back foremost.*
But Madame Necker could never prevent her
daughter from breaking in upon serious conversation
with witty sallies; after which the latter would take
refuge under Necker's wing, if her overflowing viva-
city got her into trouble.
The mother could not accustom herself to this new
state of things; her interest in her daughter dimi-
nished from the moment she ceased to be able to direct
her education on her own plan.
When Madame Necker de Saussure, later on,
praised the extraordinary gifts of Madame de Staël,
whose acquaintance she had just made, Madame
Necker characteristically replied: "They are abso-
lutely nothing in comparison to what I intended them
to be."+
On one occasion Suard found Mademoiselle Necker
* Steinlen, Bonstetten, Étude biographique et littéraire.
† Madanie Necker de Saussure, Notice sur la Vie et les Écrits de
Madame de Staël. Euvres complètes, i. xxxiv.
HER FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS.
107
in tears, and, guessing a quarrel with her mother to
be the reason of these, he endeavoured to comfort her
by saying that her father would pet her and make up
for it. The little girl at once dried her tears and
told him that she knew her father thought more of
her present, and her mother of her future happiness.*
In after-life she made the surprising statement with
regard to her father, that she used to think of him
66
as young, lovable, and alone "-at an age when if
they had been contemporaries Fate might have joined
them together" but," she added,
my mother
needed a husband who was not to be compared with
other men; she found him, spent her life with him,
and God preserved her from the misfortune of out-
living him. Peace and honour to her ashes-she
deserved happiness better than I did."†
The first public notice of Mademoiselle Necker's
literary productions occurs in Grimm's Correspond-
ence, September 1778. "Whilst Necker," it says,
"gained fame by his administrative measures, and his
wife withdrew from society to devote her energies to
the organisation of another hospital, her daughter,
aged twelve and gifted beyond her years, amused
herself by writing little comedies in the style of the
dramas of M. de Saint Marc. She has just finished
one in two acts entitled Les Inconvénients de la ville
de Paris. It is not only marvellous for her years,
* Dumont, quoted in the Edinburgh Review, 1867, cxxvi. 487.
† Madame de Staël, Du Caractère de M. Necker et sa Vie privée,
1804. Euvres complètes, xvii. 6 and 17.
108
MADAME DE STAËL.
but seems superior to all the productions of that
description which have served as her models."
The first poetical efforts of the young girl, already
showing promise and especially interesting as a sign
of the direction her talent was taking, are romantic
love-stories, the scene of which is chiefly laid in
ancient forests or in parks shaded by cypresses with
funereal urns in the distance.
With the true delight taken by youth in exaggerated
situations and poetically glorified destinies, there is a
lavish amount of unhappiness, the heroes of the piece
never die a natural death; even among the savages
who frequently figure in her pieces l'homme sensible,
the favourite type of the day, is to be found, as in
Mirza, in Sophie, Adèle et Théodore, Pauline, and
Zulma.
In all these creations of Mademoiselle Necker's
fancy-amongst others, in a drama, Jane Gray, dedi-
cated to her favourite heroine *-love-affairs play the
7 principal part. The words in the drama of Mirza
might have been taken for the motto of them all: “I
would know the sentiment which influences a life-
time and which demands entire possession of every
moment in it." + Beside the furtherance of love,
custom and duty play a very subordinate part. It is
said of women that "the history of their hearts is
also that of their lives." Mademoiselle Necker's
* Madame de Staël, Euvres complètes, xvii.
† Idem, ii. 230.
Idem, Sophie, act i. scene i.
HER FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS.
109
verses read like prose, but a keen observation of the
mind, an early knowledge of the motions and impulses
in human actions, shine through these youthful at-
tempts, and elucidate many of the characteristics of
the authoress.
It would have been quite excusable had such an
early talent induced Mademoiselle Necker's parents
to submit her prematurely to public judgment; they
did not, however, make this mistake; none of the
attempts we have mentioned appeared before 1760,
the novels only in 1795. A second tragedy, Mont-
morency, which came after Jane Gray, and therefore
about 1787, was never published, although it was far
in advance of the first, and the character of Richelieu
therein described attracted the attention of the se-
verest critics.
Amidst the approval of friends Necker did not,
however, forget the ill-will and the attacks likely to
be the portion of those who leave the beaten track
for remoter and more ambitious paths.
This old experience was again confirmed. The
tears Marmontel is said to have shed on the first
dramatic effort of a young girl of twelve years old
did not prevent his finding fault with the tricks of
his "dear madcap." Madame de Genlis-who in
those days was making her experiments as the "gover-
ness" of the Princes of Orleans, and who was destined
to follow Madame de Staël with her pen through life
-in her letters to Madame Necker certainly praised
the unusual talent of her daughter, but did not scruple
110
MADAME DE STAËL.
to speak on other occasions of the bad bringing-up of
Mademoiselle Necker, who spent three-quarters of
the day in the drawing-room, and there discussed the
nature of love with all the clever men.
This recalls an anecdote which Necker loved to
relate about his daughter, who, when quite a child,
inquired of the old Maréchale de Mouchy what she
really thought of love.
When he saw what an affection she had for writing
and composing, Necker used to call her Madame de
Sainte-Écritoire, and he restrained her so long from
any idea of publishing that when she was nineteen
years old she wrote in her journal, "My father is
quite right. Women are not meant to choose the
same path as men; why compete with them, why
excite a jealousy in them which would differ so much
from that excited by love? A woman should call
nothing her own, and she shonld only find her life's
happiness in that of the man she loves. I can imagine
Madame de Montesson in tears because of the failure
of her play;* and how different the influence of those
tears would have been if they had been produced by
a softer feeling. If our tears could be of different
colours, blue or yellow, it would not signify if we
shed them for ordinary reasons, but it is dreadful to
* Madame de Montesson had secretly confided a play of her own
composition to the Duke of Orleans (father of Philippe-Égalité). It
was entitled Le Comte de Chazelle, and was unsuccessfully given at
the Théâtre Français, May 6, 1785.
DIFFICULTIES AS TO MARRIAGE.
111
think that exactly the same kind must flow for vanity
as for love."*
The first of her writings which stepped over the
line separating purely dilettante productions from
serious literary work-the letters on J. J. Rousseau
-were more or less complete at the moment when
Mademoiselle Necker thought she had renounced
publicity.
But she adhered to her resolution by never pub-
lishing anything in her maiden name. She is only
known in literature under that of her husband.
Marriage—the turning-point in a woman's life-
was made unusually difficult for Mademoiselle Necker
by her surrounding circumstances. Although the
private life of her parents was spent in the midst of
the universal respect and admiring confidence her
father inspired, and although foreign princes as in
1782, amongst others the Comte du Nord, afterwards
the Emperor Paul, and his wife, never failed to seek
out Necker before leaving Paris,† the position of the
family was nevertheless unusual. The
The great French
aristocracy never at any time despised an alliance
among the foremost financial families, but the Neckers
were Protestants, and this entirely prevented a French
marriage, which in their daughter's eighteenth year
would otherwise have been their choice.
We must remember that the Protestant religion,
suppressed as a political faction by Richelieu and
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 49.
† Baronne Oberkirch, Mémoires, i. 315-316. English translation.
112
MADAME DE STAËL.
persecuted by Louis XIV., certainly since 1743 had
again possessed the right to conduct its services out-
side the towns in the open air; but it was only on the
eve of the Revolution, by a royal edict in January
1788, that civil rights were restored to the Protestants,
and their children legitimised. Hitherto they had
been bastards in the eyes of the law.
They could not as yet expect entire equality, and
all the barriers against Protestant alliances were
naturally enforced by the Church. There was, how-
ever, no nobility in France belonging to the so-called
reformed Church; either executions or civil wars had
thinned their ranks, or they had sought the right to
exist in foreign lands. Under these circumstances it
was no use trying to marry Mademoiselle Necker to a
Frenchman. She was seventeen years old when a
journey to Fontainebleau Necker was obliged to take
with the Court brought him and his family, in
October 1783, into contact with a foreigner, whose
fame and position, personal talents and qualities, as
well as his religion, made him an eligible suitor for
the hand of the young girl. This was William Pitt,
Lord Chatham's second son. He had spent some time
during that summer in Paris and afterwards in Rheims
with his friend Elliot and with William Wilberforce,
who at that time was twenty-four years old, and had
already been four years a member of the House of
Commons. Their purpose was to devote themselves
to acquiring the French language. Maurice de Tal-
leyrand, known as the Abbé de Périgord, happened
MADAME NECKER'S WISHES.
113
to be paying a visit to his uncle, the Archbishop of
Rheims, which gave him the opportunity of becoming
acquainted with William Pitt. They mutually taught
each other French and English during nearly six
weeks, after which the young Englishman betook him-
self to the Court of Louis XVI.* It is not known
whether during this visit, which gave him the
opportunity of making her acquaintance, he already
seriously thought of marrying Mademoiselle Necker;
but it is quite certain that such a marriage would
have been after Madame Necker's own heart.†
The young man, scarcely twenty-four years old,
and even then famous, had already announced in the
English Parliament that he could take no place but
the first in his own country, and a year later he was
Prime Minister.
But Madame Necker, whilst nourishing these
desires, thought more, as usual, of her husband than
of her daughter. She wanted most to persuade
the former of the powerful support and valuable
connection that a marriage with Pitt would bring.
We know from D'Haussonville that Pitt took preli-
minary steps in the matter and that he desired to
bring it about; and we also know that the project
came to nothing, owing to the rooted aversion ex-
pressed by Mademoiselle Necker to any plans that
would separate her from France in the future.
Whereas, like most of such assertions, the words
* The Greville Memoirs, edited by H. Reeve, ii. 345.
† D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 53, &c.
VOL. I.
I
11.4
MADAME DE STAËL.
ascribed to the young Pitt, that he was already
wedded to his country, were probably never uttered.*
CC
According to the confessions in her journal, this
incident was not without painful results. "Why,"
wrote she in those days, "should this unlucky Eng-
land be the cause of coldness and reserve between
me and my mother? Accursed island, cause of all
my present cares and future self-accusations, why
must these brilliant prospects rob me of my happiness
as well as of the right to bemoan my fate? They
force me to choose, to wish for what I would willingly
have done had I been forced to do it: they plunge
me into such uncertainty that all the reasons for my
actions are turned upside down and put to confusion
by each other.
"It was not because my heart was already given
away that I have been outwardly unchanged, al-
though frightened and agitated when alone
No, it is over; I cannot go to England." Thus ran
the somewhat confused explanation of the young
girl's decision. But she never again had the chance
of becoming a great man's wife.
In contemporaneous accounts the affair is often
mentioned: Wilberforce speaks of it in his memoirs
and in a letter to his father. Count Fersen men-
tions the name of the English statesman as that of
a rival of Staël, who at that time was a friend of his.§
*Stanhope, Life of Pitt, i. 132.
† D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 60.
Wilberforce, Life, Letters, and Diary, i. 39.
§ Klinkowström, Le Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France. Intro-
duction, xxxiv.
THE NECKER FAMILY IN SWITZERLAND. 115
Mademoiselle Necker never gave it another thought
after her mother left off reproaching her about it,
and for this she had not to wait long. In the winter
of 1784 Madame Necker received such undoubted
proofs of her daughter's affection at a time when her
health became worse that she forgave her resistance
under characteristic conditions. As she believed
herself to be dying, she desired that Necker should
be her daughter's chief care and object in life, as
well as that of her husband and children in the
future. "Tell them," wrote Madame Necker in a sort
of last testament, "that your father must be the
centre of their existence, that they must make him
their chief thought.
Follow him wherever he
may go; never allow him to sleep under another
roof than your own unless for some very weighty
reason. Cultivate your cheerful disposition. You
will only err when you try to be different from what
Give up the world, you will never rightly
understand its ways; live for God, for your father,
and your duty."
you are.
This was the price of Madame Necker's forgiveness
of the behaviour which had deprived her husband of
a son-in-law who would have been so worthy of him
and who would have been of such advantage to
him. As her mother's health improved, Mademoiselle
Necker was spared the pain of such a communication.
It is in fact uncertain whether it ever came into her
hands,* and in the spring of 1784 the family removed
• D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 55-58.
I 2
116
MADAME DE STAËL.
for a time to Beaulieu near Lausanne for the sake of
the invalid.
Thence Madame Necker wrote to Thomas that
neither quiet, native air, nor the milk in the moun-
tains, made her life anything but a struggle against
her own nature, and that every victory was won with
difficulty.*
Of her earlier friends, Bonstetten was now bailli
of Nyon, and had married Mademoiselle de Watteville
in 1776. He meanwhile had formed a brotherly
friendship with John von Müller, travelled to Italy,
admired the Countess of Albany in Rome, become a
member of the High Council at Berne on his return,
and governor, first in the small mountainous district
of Gessenay, and then on the shores of Leman, where,
with his family and Matthison the German poet, with
whom he had recently made friends, he led an idyllic
existence, into which the arrival of the Necker family
introduced a welcome variety.†
When Thomas came to seek out Madame Necker in
the Swiss mountains he found her already established
at Coppet, the new home Necker had selected as a
permanent abode for his family. It is characteristic
I
of those times that the château was, and is still, so
situated that its surroundings entirely shut out the
panorama of the Lake of Geneva, one of the finest in
Europe.
* Madame Necker, Mélanges, iii. 202, to Thomas, June, 1784.
† A. Steinlen, Charles Victor de Bonstetten, Étude biographique et
littéraire, 83.
† Madame Necker, Mélanges, iii. 205, to Thomas, Dec. 1784.
COPPET.
117
The past history of this property, situated close to
Geneva in the Canton de Vaud, made it not altogether
unworthy of the part it was to play in the literary and
political history of the next thirty years.
Count Peter of Savoy built the château in 1257
when he took possession of the Canton de Vaud for
his race.
Another prince of his house made Coppet into a
barony, a title which Necker received with it, and
which is mentioned in his marriage-contract, for the
Canton de Vaud was just as aristocratic as Geneva
was republican. After the sixteenth century Coppet
frequently changed hands; it was burnt, restored,
pulled down, and rebuilt, till, in the seventeenth cen-
tury, it passed itno the hands of the Dohnas, a Saxon
family. One of them, Count Frederick Dohna, then
governor of the principality of Orange belonging to
the house of Nassau, was highly thought of by the
Genevese Government. Bayle was eighteen months 7
at Coppet between 1673 and 1674 as secretary and
tutor to his children, but he never mentions it in his
writings. In 1713 the property passed out of the
hands of one of his pupils, Count Alexander Dohna,
into those of the Baron Sigismund von Erlach, who
in his turn only kept it a short time. After many
changes it came into the possession of Thelusson the
banker, and he sold it to Necker, who engaged to
become the good and true vassal of their excellencies
of the high council at Berne, and never without their
especial sanction to give up the property to any one
118
MADAME DE STAËL.
who did not profess the Reformed faith. The main-
tenance of this clause, occasioned by the intolerance
of the Bernese councillors, at one time prevented
Voltaire from becoming a householder in Lausanne
on account of his Catholic views.
Thus at a cost of 500,000 francs, and by the pay-
ment of a third of this sum to the Bernese Govern-
ment, Necker became the possessor of the château of
Coppet, after he had for a time thought of succeeding
Voltaire at Ferney. We leave it to his grand-nephew
the Vicomte d'Haussonville to give a description of
Coppet which belongs to the history of the Necker
family as the frame to a picture.
"Then as now," he writes, "the château was a
big building without any particular ornament; it
consists of the main body and two wings surrounding
the courtyard. To get into the latter one has to
pass under an arched gateway. An iron gate which
formerly must have been connected with a drawbridge
separates the park from the courtyard. This gateway
ends in two towers; one of these is modern; but the
thickness of its walls proves the antiquity of the other.
One of the piers has an iron ring to which prisoners
used to be secured."
From the windows of the long gallery which Necker
chose for his study, and which later on was used for
theatrical representations, nothing can be seen across
the level ground in summer except the tops of the
plantains hiding the houses of the neighbouring village;
but from the balcony on the next floor there is a view
COPPET.
119
that can never be forgotten by the beholder, and the
charm of it brings him back to Coppet, just as, according
to popular belief, the traveller who has once tasted of
the waters of Trevi is irresistibly drawn to return to
Rome.
To the right lies Geneva, almost invisible in the
sheen of the midday sun, reflected in its zinc-adorned
towers; but towards evening its rows of white houses
stand out against the reddened horizon. The massive
forms of the mountain chains in Savoy are to be seen
opposite, varied by woods and meadows. To the left
is the lake, the beautiful lake, stretching its smooth
surface towards Lausanne. Any one leaving the
house for the park might imagine himself a hundred
miles from the lake and the mountains. Two long
straight alleys, the last trace of a French fashion,
would tell him that this park belonged to the times
when people did not walk for the sake of the view,
but principally to enjoy conversation in the shade.
He will then understand why the tall trees, described
by Madame de Staël as "the friends and dumb wit-
nesses of her fate," shut out the view on all sides, only
permitting an occasional glimpse of the distant blue of
the Jura. Coppet is exactly as it was a hundred
years ago. Not a stone has been altered. Lovely
dwellings have been since erected on the hills sur-
rounding the lake, and charming gardens lead to its
shores; but when the enchanted eye is turned from
them back into the somewhat sombre courtyard at
Coppet, and above all when the visitor crosses the
120
MADAME DE STAËL.
threshold to find the house unchanged, and many of
the rooms ready as it were for the reception of their
former guests, he will readily admit the special charm
of melancholy grandeur linking it with its associations
in the past.*
Under its new possessors Coppet was more a busy
intellectual centre than a retreat from the turmoil of
life or for the enjoyment of nature.
Crassy being only at an hour's distance, all the
memories of her childhood were awakened in Madame
Necker. She erected a monument in the village
church at Coppet in memory of her parents, worked
as much among the poor and the sick as she had
done in Paris and at St. Ouen, and was judicious in
the use of her time and in her expenditure. As she
would take no money from her husband for her own
use, he made one of her friends represent to her that
a small sum of her own of 8,000 francs had increased
to 30,000, and this she devoted to charitable purposes.
If she could not sleep at night she liked some one
to read aloud to her, or else she wrote down her im-
pressions; her greatest consolation was to gather
old friends around her. To her sorrow an early death
prevented Thomas from carrying out his plan of
settling permanently in the neighbourhood of Coppet,
but Moultou and his family lived an honoured and
active life as formerly in Geneva, and Gibbon was
much visited in Lausanne.
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, i. 235 and 282.
† Baronne de Gérando née de Rathsamhausen, Lettres, Madame de
Gérando sur Madame Necker, 1802.
OLD FRIENDS.
121
To reassure his friends in England, who feared
that he was being separated from the world by his
residence in Switzerland, he tells one of them how
on the same day he had visits from the celebrated
doctor Tissot, the French author Mercier, the Abbé
Raynal, Prince Henry of Prussia, the Abbé de Bour-
bon, a natural son of Louis XV., and from a natural
son of the Empress Catherine. He does not mention
his name, but it was the young Count Bobrinski.*
Besides these, the Necker family, Servan, and perhaps
a dozen remarkable counts and barons, met together
on his terrace.†
Victor de Bonstetten frequently came over from
Berne or Nyon to recover from the dreadfully dull
society of his colleagues, and to be cheered up in his
literary efforts, which alternately busied themselves
with death, eternity, idylls in Gessner's style, or the
question of the free export of home-made butter,
which finally were all bound up peaceably together
in one volume. The historian John von Müller, who
had met the Neckers at Bonstetten's, was afterwards
taken by him to Coppet during the winter of 1783,
at which period he was enlightening the minds of
the rising generation in Berne with his lectures on
ancient history.§
* J. Groth, Letters from the Empress Catherine II. to Grimm, 1774-
1796.
† Gibbon to Lord Sheffield, Oct. 1784.
K. Morell, Charles Victor de Bonstetten: A contemporary Sketch
of Swiss life.
§ A. Steinlen, Charles Victor de Bonstetten, 141.
122
MADAME DE STAËL.
Only Madame Necker was entirely content with
the quiet life they led; she had tasted the cup of
worldly honour and joy, and found it bitter. The
day she had sought for was over, and her celebrity
now appeared to her as a fearful phantom.
Even during her husband's first administration she
wrote to Thomas that she had hoped to live in the
Golden Age under a model government, but she had
only found the Iron Age. "Everything tends to
show that all we can aspire to is to work as little
harm as possible ;"* and to this she adds a sentence
as true as it is just, for it alludes to the danger in-
curred by even the best of people who meddle with
public affairs : "What erroneous judgments one
forms," she says, "even when one has spent one's
life with distinguished men!" †
Her further share in the fortunes of her husband
lay in the entire and unselfish devotion she had made
her rule in life. "The best way is never to think of
oneself if one wishes not to be forgotten." t
His second administration, with its difficulties
and responsibilities, not only impaired her physical
strength, but her mental capacity for satisfying all the
demands of such an entire change of position.
During that time at Coppet he was completely
dominated by a longing to resume his public activity.
This longing was at once painfully increased by the
*Madame Necker, Mélanges, iii. to Thomas, 1779.
† Madame Necker, Mélanges, i. 83.
‡ Idem, ii. 298.
6
NECKER INCONSOLABLE ON LOSS OF POSITION. 123
arrival of any old friends or colleagues. Mademoiselle
Necker mentions this, on the occasion of a visit from de
Lessart, afterwards minister under Louis XVI. and of a
son of the Maréchal de Castries, who was among the
independent deputies in 1789. He bore the reputa-
tion of a clever financier, and as such had energetically
supported Necker's first minority. "The presence of
ambitious men," she writes after the departure of
their guests, "was unbearable to my father. The words
Only those who will return shall receive shelter’
ought to be written over our door. Must I confess
it? Ah yes! my father cannot bear to be reminded
of the loss he still mourns: how can it be otherwise
when he knows so well what he can accomplish?
A splendid career in which public opinion would have
encouraged him; successes which must have flattered
him, because they aimed at the present and future
well-being of a nation, with France and Europe as
the scene of action. I thought indeed that his work
would compensate for all this. I used to tell him that
after he had taught and shown mankind what might
be accomplished he need neither distress nor reproach
himself when condemned to inactivity; but the de-
velopment of his ideas, his increased knowledge of
the resources of France, and of the nation's misery,
give him a taste of the torments of Tantalus, although
his differ in their nature. He sees a splendid building
tottering, without being at hand to save it. He will
not acknowledge this feeling, and I follow his example.
His former position is to us like an unfaithful sweet-
·
124
MADAME DE STAËL.
heart: we do nothing but abuse it, but if it came back
we should talk very differently. .
My father
was at his happiest at Coppet; there we breathed
independence, and were happy. In presence of those
mountains, soaring to heaven, all ambitious desires
seemed so small. Between us and France there arose
an enormous barrier. The people in Switzerland do
not in any way remind my father of greatness and
power, as these are quite foreign to them, whereas in
France society values nothing so much.
In society
our present position suffers from what we were for-
merly; a minister out of office is like a woman who
was once beautiful, and would prefer henceforward
to live with those who had not known her in her
youth."
The praises of Coppet are sounded with many
variations at that period, but where Necker is in
· question they always end in one form or another with
"How delightful it would be were he again called
back to govern France.”
This lovely idyl of the Swiss mountains, over which
the fascination of the Nouvelle Héloïse spread like
morning dew, represented a place of banishment
whence not only Madame de Staël, but Mademoiselle
Necker before her, longed to escape, and once again
to mix in society and the stir of the great world.
When she first expressed her disinclination for a
country life she wrote as follows: "A terrible fear
took hold of me that my father would choose to spend
the rest of his days at Coppet; may he forgive me,
NOTES FROM 1783 AND 1785.
125
but my store of memories will not suffice me for the
rest of my life; I neither strive after illusions or
pleasures, but, although I worship him, I would
shrink from thinking that the door was shut behind
us three for ever. Perhaps I only need a little time
to become accustomed to solitude. Were he to be
left without other ties I would at once give up every-
thing and devote myself entirely to him; I should
banish every other desire from my soul. To purchase
a moment of happiness for him is worth the sacrifice
of a life-time.* If only I might die first when the
moment comes for our separation! It would be more
than I could bear that I should be the survivor; I
have given my whole life to those who in all proba-
bility have fewer years to live. Oh, God, hear the
sincerest prayer my soul has ever uttered! Spare me
a grief that I cannot name; and, if Thou sendest it,
grant forgiveness if I lay hands on Thine Image,
that I may go to thee."
These outpourings of an excited imagination bear
the date of the 28th July. The following day these
impressions had not calmed down, and in the midst
of the beauties of summer these same dark visions
recurred. "Last night," the young girl writes, "we
had a dreadful storm; the great efforts of Nature
make more impression on me than anything artificial
could do. Nature was created for our use, and we
feel this by its influence over us. I was alone, and
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 178.
1.26
MADAME DE STAËL.
only heard the sound of the storm; that of the sur-
rounding inhabitants had ceased, and a quiet melan-
choly took possession of me. I heard the rain falling
in torrents; the thunder made me feel God's might
every moment and the danger I was incurring. A
feeling of confidence drew me heavenwards, and, to
still further reassure myself, I passed in review all
that could make it indifferent to me to cease to exist;
a fatal enumeration if death is not to follow. I was
bathed in tears; I conjured up the thought that I
was attacked by the small-pox,-a woman had died
of that malady in the neighbourhood just at that
time; this manner of death horrified me; all those
we loved must be sent away from us; we must refuse
the charm of death, the happiness of giving them the
last tokens of tenderness, which are made so solemn
and touching at that fatal moment; we may not
speak to them, just when all we have to say is so full
of weight. Ah! it seems as if the happiness of life
were gathered into those moments, which we know
to be the last. And how dreadful to feel that the
illness could affect our minds and make us different
to what we generally are!
"What! could we be capable of coldness to those
we usually adore? They would never be able to
detach their remembrance of us from that time of
delirium. I know that it is a great mistake to allow
a death-bed impression to dwell in one's mind, but
this pain is inseparable from the last farewells
and then I dread the disfiguring results of this unholy
THOUGHTS ON YOUTH.
127
malady. Our features can no longer express our
thoughts or our eyes behold those we most love;
when our lips are closed our glance can no longer
express what they could have said; we may not lay
a beloved hand on our heart to count its last pulsa-
tions. And how dreadful it would be to die in the
fear of having communicated the poison that has
consumed us to those we love! We wish them to
mourn, but we desire that they should live; we do
not die when we leave those behind us whom we
love, we escape from annihilation; and even in our
last moments the thought that those we love must
die presents itself in all its horror." *
We cannot be surprised if one whose mind and
imagination were filled by such pictures should in
thinking of her own youth break out in the words:
"Ce temps si faussement vanté, ce temps de passions
et de larmes ! " "When nature strikes a chord,"
as Herder says,
"the secret growth of talent pro-
duces scarcely understood or recognised storms and
visions, which at the appointed hour take the form of
ideals which then become Werther, Posa, Réné,
Delphine, or Corinne." We only find one allu-
sion to another feeling aroused in the young girl's
heart, and confided to a German friend. She deplores
the fate of those who are not free to dispose of their
own future, and mentions that her first and only love
was a man who sued in vain for her hand.† He was
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 65-70.
† Varnhagen von Ense, Denkwurdigkeiten und vermischte Schriften,
Justus Erich Bollman, i. 1-33.
128
MADAME DE STAËL.
destined to come across her later in life, as she here
alludes to Comte Louis de Narbonne, whose betrothal
to another lady was already decided in 1782, when
she first met him in her sixteenth year.
The family spent part of the winter of 1785 at Mont-
pellier, for Madame Necker's health. Its celebrated
doctors attracted invalids from all parts of the world.
The only reminiscence of this visit is to be found
in a Swiss correspondence, describing the Necker
family as "consummées de vapeurs et d'ennuis."*
On her return with her parents to Paris, Mademoi-
selle Necker partly undertook the household
super-
vision, corresponded with her mother's friends, and
received the strangers and resident guests in Paris as
well as at St. Ouen. One of these, Sir John Sinclair,
gratefully records the pleasure she gave him by
reciting some Scotch ballads; † while the Comtesse de
Sabran, who was not easily amused and whose memory
has been prolonged by the publication of some of the
most charming letters of the eighteenth century, no less
gratefully relates how she was unable to resist her
overflowing merriment. This return to Paris brought
plans to maturity which for some time had been con-
nected with Mademoiselle Necker's destiny.
Since the days of Louis XIV. and the Northern
Alliance, the Swedes enjoyed a popularity in the
* Gaullieur, Etudes sur l'Histoire de la Suisse-Français, 300. M.
de Salgas à Madame de Charrière.
† Sir John Sinclair, Correspondance, i. 153, 154.
E. de Magnieu et H. Prat, Correspondance de la Comtesse de
Sabran, 254.
THE SWEDES IN FRANCE.
129
French capital, to which politics had only given an
incentive. It is true that they were still prized as
the allies of Richelieu and the French crown, which
in return gave the Swedish subsidies a more or less
permanent place in its budget; but, independently of
this, the Swedes were cordially received in Paris as
refined and pleasant men of the world and gallant
soldiers. The predecessors of Count Creutz in diplo-
macy had increased the dignity of their position by
their personal qualities and diplomatic skill. Count
Sparre was especially remembered as ambassador to
the court of Louis XV., during the first half of his
long reign, no less on account of his manly beauty
than on account of his intellect. On the occasion of a
great dinner to which all the ambassadors were invited,
the king addressed him in these words: "Monsieur de
Sparre, you are not of the same faith as I am; this I
regret, as I shall never meet you in heaven." There-
upon came the quick retort, "Pardon me, sire: my
master the king has given me orders to follow your
majesty wherever you go." *
In Sweden people affected Descartes' philosophy,
French literature, art, and industry, and looked to
Paris as another Mecca.
The good understanding between the two countries
was first disturbed when the aristocratic party in
Stockholm had taken the upper hand in 1720, and
had injured the power of the crown under a weak
* Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, ii. 83.
VOL. I.
K
130
MADAME DE STAËL.
monarch of German origin, who used to say that he
would rather be a drummer in Germany than a king
in Sweden. The humiliations he endured only made
his queen, Louise Ulrica (sister to the Great Frederick),
all the more determined that her son, the Crown
Prince, afterwards Gustavus III., should avenge all the
injuries they had suffered at the hands of an insolent
Swedish nobility. "Never forget," she wrote to the
Crown Prince, when he wended his way to Paris
across Germany in 1770, "never forget that we are
the greatest beggars in Europe, and that there is no
small prince in my country who would not have
handsomer furniture, handsomer silver plate, and a
better establishment; the small amount of fortune we
still possess is in the hands of the clergy and the
peasantry. The nobility, which ought to be insured
against want all over the world, is ground down in
this country, and stupid enough into the bargain to
ignore its only means of help. What is worse, it
accelerates its own ruin by accepting bribes of 2,000 or
3,000 thalers, and in every Reichstag sacrifices its
privileges and its opinion to the majority.
"This is a terrible picture, verify it yourself. You
will say, 'My mother is in a bad temper,' but who
would not be, in this miserable country where people
are dying of ennui, where politics are perpetually dis-
cussed, and after all the talking no results follow ? "*
The young man to whom these bitter words were
*Geijer, Gustave III. Posthumous Papers, ii. 5.
PRINCE GUSTAVUS BECOMES KING.
131
addressed was twenty-four years old, and was brought
up
in the French style, but with the opinions of the
ruling party; when his education was completed his
heart was supposed to be as shallow as his brain,*
and he was forced into an unhappy marriage. Always
at dispeace with his mother and wife, mannerless,
superficial but clever, calculating, bold, and above all
things determined to sacrifice even his life to the
security of the throne and the independence of the
kingdom; such was the young prince, judging by
outward appearances, who came to Paris intending
to restore the disturbed relations with France, aided
by the influence of Choiseul. When he reached the
capital, Choiseul had been dismissed from office, and
the young prince's success seemed questionable. Just
then his father died suddenly, in February 1771, and
Gustavus was king. He did not leave Paris without
having come to an understanding with Louis XV.
and his new ministry, which led from that moment
to the renewal of the French subsidies to Sweden,
whereby he succeeded in restoring the power of the
crown against a predominating nobility, unfavourable
moreover to the French alliance. These conditions were
agreed to on the 19th August, 1772. Gustavus III.
carried out this stroke of policy without the loss of a
drop of blood, met his Estates with the outlines of
three constitutions in his pocket, and in a quarter-of-
an-hour the oath was taken to the one amongst them
* Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, i. 97. Léouzon Le
Duc, Gustave III., Roi de Suède. Paris, 1861.
K 2
132
MADAME DE STAËL.
which seemed the most suitable. A recent historian
bestows the merit upon it of having saved Sweden
from the fate of Poland.* The young king continued
to govern in Stockholm, and to be admired at Ferney
as one of those enlightened beings who are "powerful
for good, and restrain their hands from evil." He
protected the freedom of the press and of education,
supported the physiocrats, allowed Dalekarlien to be
planted with potatoes in deference to the wishes of
his French lady friends, and his capital to be embel-
lished by French artists,† and was quite pleased when
his young Swedish nobles were admitted into the
French regiments, only stipulating that they should
eventually return to his service. From a military
point of view, the most brilliant of these was Count
Stedingk, a contemporary of Gustavus III. Born in
1746, the same year as the king, he was destined to
outlive him until 1837. He fought in the American
War of Independence with his friends Lauzun, Coigny,
Talleyrand-Périgord, Vaudreuil, Noailles, Vauban,
Ségur, La Fayette, and distinguished himself so
immensely at the storming of the fortifications of
Savannah, that, on his return to France in 1780, in
consequence of a severe wound, he found his doughty
deeds celebrated in the Parisian theatres and himself
the hero of the day. It must also be observed that
Mademoiselle Necker celebrated this event in vers
d'occasion. He left the service of Louis XVI. in
* Albert Sorel, L'Europe et la Révolution Française, i. 65.
† Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, i. 5.
1
COUNT JOHN AXEL FERSEN.
133
1787 to join the royal Swedish regiment during the
campaign in Finland; he left it as a field-marshal,
and at its termination went to Petersburg as Swedish
ambassador to the Empress Catharine. He remained
in this position with her successor, and during this
time * Count Joseph de Maistre learnt to know and
appreciate him. In the year 1774 a young com-
patriot of Stedingk's, Count John Axel Fersen, first
came to Paris, at the age of nineteen; he was a son
of the senator, Count Joseph Axel, one of the most
influential and distinguished men in Sweden. His
mother was of French descent, and belonged to the
Protestant family of De la Gardie, which had taken
refuge in Sweden. He only remained a short time,
but was presented to the king at Versailles, to Madame
du Barry, and the whole court, and from that time
was dubbed the "handsome Fersen." Count Creutz
wrote to the king that the young man's bearing was
most commendable, and that he united rare nobility
of thought to the most engaging appearance and to
considerable intelligence.† Louis XV. granted an
officer's commission to Count Fersen in the royal
Bavarian regiment; he returned, however, in 1778
to Paris, and from that moment enjoyed the favour
of Queen Marie Antoinette, which later on gave rise
to much misinterpretation. It was imagined that on
* Graf Biörnstierna, Mémoires du Feld-Maréchal Comte Stedingk.
2 vols. Paris, 1844.
† Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, i. 359. Reumont,
Kleine historische Schriften: König Gustav von Schweden in Aachen,
1780-1791, 319, &c.
134
MADAME DE STAËL.
one occasion when, she sang the lines out of the opera
Dido at the harpsichord,
"Ah que je fus bien inspirée
Quand je vous reçus dans ma cour,"
her glance was directed with scarcely concealed
emotion towards Fersen. In a letter to the king
Graf Creutz relates how well he withstood this severe
ordeal, and the events to follow increased the value of
such weighty testimony in favour of these two victims,
so tragically sacrificed to the Revolution. On the
10th of April, 1779, Creutz writes: "I must own to
your majesty that Count Fersen is in such favour
with the queen that many people take exception to
it: I myself cannot avoid seeing that she inclines
towards him, for I have seen such unmistakeable
signs of it that it is impossible to have any doubts on
the subject. His behaviour under the circumstances
deserves admiration; he has proved himself so
modest and reserved. His resolve to go to
America puts all danger aside; but a power of will
far in excess of his years was necessary to pull
through such a complication. During the last few
days the queen never kept her eyes off him, and
they were filled with tears. I implore your majesty
for the sake of the queen, and of Senator Fersen, to
preserve the strictest secrecy on this subject. When
the news of his intended journey was spread abroad,
the Duchess of FitzJames said to him 'So you give
up your conquest?' To this he replied, "If I had
BARON VON STAËL HOLSTEIN.
135
made one I would not give it up; I take my leave as
a free man, and fortunately no one will regret me.'
Your majesty will admit that an answer of this sort
showed remarkable wisdom and self-control." *
The young man's
appearance agreed with his old
friend's description; it had something noble and dis-
tinguished about it; the handsome, and gentle, but
melancholy features, would have suited the hero of a
romance, but not a French one,† as a contemporary
says, for he had neither the boldness nor entrain of
that nation. When Dumouriez met him in Belgium
in 1792, Fersen himself relates that the general, who
had only bowed to him slightly, apologized, with the
remark that he might have remembered him by his
good looks. Many years after, Herder used to
quote him as the handsomest man he had ever seen,
only he thought his appearance lacked animation.§
Fersen fought with renown in America, and was
appointed colonel, travelled with King Gustavus on
his return, and only revisited Paris in 1784, when
Louis XVI. gave him the command of the royal
Swedish regiment.
Meanwhile another Swede, Baron Erich Magnus
von Staël - Holstein, had become domesticated in
Parisian society, and had been secretary to the
Swedish embassy under Count Creutz since 1776.
* Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, i. 361.
† Duc de Lévis, Souvenirs.
‡ Klinkowström, Le Comte Fersen et la Cour de France, ii. 69.
Fersen, Journal. April, 1792.
§ Böttiger, Literarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen.
136
MADAME DE STAËL.
Born in 1749 the young man came of an old Swedish
race, and was intended for the army, in which he
served until he joined the diplomatic service: at one
time Staël had thought of sharing in the American
war, but on the English side.* He was pleasant in
society, clever, persevering, and careful of his ap-
pearance, although not as brilliant as Stedingk or as
winning as Fersen. On the other hand he perfectly
understood how to ingratiate himself with the older
French ladies, the friends of his sovereign. King
Gustavus used to correspond with several of those
after his residence in France, and to allow them to
keep him informed in all the news and political
incidents of the day. The most attractive among
these ladies, the beautiful, enthusiastic, and clever
Comtesse d'Egmont (one of the first to whom Rous-
seau read his Confessions), tried even on her death-
bed to inspire Gustavus with political ideals con-
cerning freedom and the happiness of mankind. Very
different from this poetic and original creature was
the old Comtesse de la Marck, whose existence dated
from the days of Louis XIV. and who was derided
by Palissot as the pedantic authoress of a quarto
volume, treating,
"de l'esprit, du bon sens,
Des passions, des lois, et des gouvernements,
De la vertu, des mœurs, du climat, des usages
Des peuples policés, et des peuples sauvages,
Du désordre apparent, de l'ordre universel,
Du bonheur idéal, et du bonheur réel.”
* Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de
Staël-Holstein.
Introduction, v.
MATRIMONIAL TRANSACTIONS,
137
More influential and practical than Madame de la
Marck was Madame de Boufflers, but equally full of
a political ideal which she imagined was to be found
in the British constitution. She was the friend of
Hume, Jean Jacques, and Gustavus III., whom she
hospitably entertained at Auteuil; she was also the
only woman of her day who had acquired a thorough
personal knowledge of other countries. A long-
established friendship with the Prince of Conti, who
lived in the neighbourhood of the Temple, earned
for her the name of "Idole du Temple"; she had the
reputation of being as amiable as she was clever, and
was not offended when Voltaire's sound sense took
exception to "all those ladies who occupied them-
selves with the French constitution," in the following
squib:
"Mais, monsieur, des Capets les lois fondementales,
Et le grenier à sel, et les lois féodales,
Et le gouvernement du Chancelier Duprat." *
Young Staël was so successful in pleasing the
Comtesse Boufflers that Creutz wrote to the king that
she was as fond of him as if he were her own son;
he added jestingly that all the pretty women, like
Madame de la Marck and the Maréchale de Luxem-
bourg (both over sixty), had sworn to work his ruin
if he did not take Staël. The sort of protection the
latter required may be gathered from Creutz's last
remarks about him, mentioning that he had run
* Voltaire's Satire: Les Cabales. 1772.
138
MADAME DE STAËL.
through all his fortune and was without a farthing.*
The first indication of the ways and means whereby
Staël sought to escape his difficulties is found in a
letter addressed to the king on the 27th of June, 1779,
in which he reminded him of having spoken to him
before as to his intention of seeking Mademoiselle
Necker's hand. Staël knew later on, from a conver-
sation on the subject between Comtesse Boufflers and
Madame Necker, that the affair would be favourably
entertained, but Madame Necker had emphatically
said that only a man in a completely assured position,
and that in France, could have any chance of be-
coming her son-in-law, as neither she nor Necker
could bring themselves to consent to a permanent
separation from their daughter. Mademoiselle Necker
was then in her fourteenth and Staël in his thirtieth
year, but, notwithstanding all the considerations and
difficulties which were opposed to him, he never from
this moment dropped his matrimonial projects. In
a series of letters, the tone of which became more
and more pressing, he implored the king to assure
him of the reversion of the post of ambassador to the
French court as the goal of his desires, and he en-
listed all the influence of his friends to attain this
object. When Gustavus III. showed signs of inde-
cision, although his answers were friendly, Creutz
wrote to him in April 1782 that the outcome of this
appointment would be to secure one of the most con-
*Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-
Holstein. Introduction. Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France.
MATRIMONIAL NEGOCIATIONS.
139
siderable fortunes in France to Baron de Staël, and
that with an income of 500,000 francs his family
would occupy a brilliant and influential position,
equal perhaps to that possessed by the Duc de Soubise,
only no time should be lost, as Mademoiselle Necker's
parents would soon decide about her. His efforts,
and the repeated prayers of Madame de Boufflers and
her protégé, seemed at last to have obtained the
desired hearing. Gustavus III. gave his lady-friend
the assurance that, in case of any change in his
diplomatic representation in Paris, he would appoint
a minister-plenipotentiary, and give this post to
Baron de Staël only, who tendered his most grateful
thanks in July 1782. In the following year the
anticipated change came to pass, as Creutz was ap-
pointed Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs,
and returned to Sweden. But Staël suffered a new
and bitter disappointment, when, unmindful of his
promise, the king appeared to be determined to name
Baron Taube for Paris. "My position is too dread-
ful," wrote the distracted Staël; "nothing can save
me from ruin if your majesty is not pleased to alter
the determination which seals my misfortune. If it
remains unaltered nothing is left me except to hide
myself in the remotest corner of the world, whence
my prayers and complaints can be heard no longer,
and where I can upbraid the fate that has destined
me to be the only one born to misfortune of all your
majesty's subjects." Things did not turn out quite
so badly as this letter represents them, for there was
140
MADAME DE STAËL.
one means of obtaining favour still left,-and this
decided the question,-namely, the queen. In 1771,
when still dauphiness, the king of Sweden had
earned her disapprobation, as he had not been too
proud to appear at Madame du Barri's, and to present
a valuable collar to her lap-dog, in pursuit of his own
purposes. Since that date, however, their relations
had become very friendly, and Marie Antoinette was
always glad to see the Swedish nobles about her
court. It was she who notified her wish to bring
about a marriage between Count Stedingk and Made-
moiselle Necker; nothing, however, came of it, as
Stedingk cared too much for his liberty to give it
up.* But Baron Staël was also a favourite of hers,
and even in 1781 she expressed her hope, in a note
to King Gustavus, that they should keep him per-
manently in Paris. In March 1783 she again returned
to the subject, and Creutz wrote to his sovereign
that he ventured in his own interests earnestly to
remind him that a serious misunderstanding with the
French court was to be feared if this suggestion,
already once offered by the queen, was not carried
out. Meanwhile Gustavus had gone to Italy, and,
as his own revenues could not satisfy his love of
magnificence, he could afford less than ever to do
without the French subsidies. However little Staël's
appointment might suit his own intentions he never-
Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, i. 355.
† Geffroy, i. 373, 376, 573. Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance du
Baron de Staël. Introduction, viii.
MATRIMONIAL NEGOCIATIONS.
141
theless granted it to the queen, and before the end
of the year 1783 Staël was chargé d'affaires, then
minister-plenipotentiary, and afterwards, according
to the mistaken custom of the day, ambassador for
six years, and stood so high in the royal graces at
Versailles that Creutz declared that during his long
term of office he never had received such marks of
favour either from Louis XVI. or his queen.*
From Florence Gustavus wrote to his new ambas-
sador, "If you marry Mademoiselle Necker you will
be the richest uoble in your own country, and like
Caesar you will be able to say, 'Better to be first
there than second in Rome!"" and later on he says,
"Try and bring the affair to a satisfactory conclusion,
and then I will myself come to Paris for the signature
of your marriage-contract.† In other words, the
king had done his best and all the more impatiently
awaited the fulfilment of the conditions advanced by
the other side.
Staël had not, however, come to an end of his trials.
When his sovereign actually came to Paris, in 1784,
no marriage-contract was ready for signature. The
Necker family was in Switzerland, and no longer
seemed to set the same value on what had been
accomplished after such prolonged uncertainty. The
king's visit cost his ambassador the round sum of
200,000 francs. On this distressing occasion the
* Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-
Holstein. Introduction.
† Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, i. 379, and ii. 412.
142
MADAME DE STAËL.
Comtesse Boufflers came, however, to the rescue and
saved the situation for her friend Staël. She again
addressed herself to Coppet, and at last received the
final conditions on which the Necker family expressed
themselves willing once again to entertain the Staël
project of marriage. These conditions, dated May
21st, 1784, were:-
(1) A life appointment of Staël to the French
embassy.
(2) A pension of 20,000 francs, should unforeseen
events deprive him of this post.
(3) The title of Count, especially to obviate any
confusion between Baronne de Staël and another
lady of the same name who bore a doubtful reputation.
(4) A solemn promise on Staël's part only to take
his wife to Sweden for a short time, and then only
with their consent.
(5) Investiture of the Order of the Polar Star for
the ambassador.
(6) An explicit declaration from Marie Antoinette
in favour of this marriage.
Whilst these conditions depending on King Gus-
tavus reached their destination and awaited their
despatch, an untoward fate prepared fresh dangers
for Staël. In the course of the year 1785 no less
a suitor than a German prince, George Augustus of
Mecklenburg, brother of the reigning duke, appeared
on the scene, a man of forty, whose suit was no less
businesslike than were Necker's conditions in the
Staël project. He describes himself as "a post-
COUNT FERSEN AND KING GUSTAVUS.
143
humous son, and as having amassed a considerable
amount of debt as a simple major in the emperor's
service." He could add in his favour that by a union
with him Mademoiselle Necker would be related by
marriage to the king of England. Necker added that
he had already entered into engagements for his
daughter's marriage, the result of which he was bound
by loyalty and affection to await, and there was no
further mention of the German prince.* Meanwhile,
as no marriage with Staël seemed to be coming
about, Fersen again casually thought of becoming a
suitor for Mademoiselle Necker's hand; since the
king's return he was again living in Paris, as colonel
of his French regiment, and was, as he had always
been, the darling of society and of the Court. Gus-
tavus III. was at Malins when news of this project
reached him. However much he might have wished
for the consummation, he says in a letter to Fersen,
written June 1785: "If I am to believe the news-
papers," he writes, "you are on the point of making
a great marriage, and poor Staël seems to have been
unsuccessful. I cannot be surprised; there are a
hundred reasons why M. Necker should prefer you to
any one else for his daughter, and your prospects of a
settled income are of no small importance in the eyes
of a banker. Still, I have my doubts about it all,
as your small inclination for matrimony and your
preference for English women is known to me."+
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 75, 76.
+ Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance du Baron de Staël. Introduc-
tion, xiv.
VOL. I.
144
MADAME DE STAËL.
We know the reason of this allusion. Before he
went to America there was a talk of a marriage
between Fersen and a very rich girl, Mademoiselle de
Beijol, whose father was a naturalised Englishman.*
But the king was quite right, and Fersen never
married. "You will already have seen," he writes
to his father, "why the idea I once entertained
about Mademoiselle Necker could never have been
fulfilled, even although you had consented to it, and
that because of my friend Staël, whom it suits exactly,
and far better than it would suit me.
To please you,
my dear father, I had thought of it, and am not in
the least annoyed that I did not succeed."† Even to
the king nothing was left but to give his consent.
In the peace of Versailles he had also made his con-
ditions, and in return for giving Staël the post of ambas-
sador he demanded the island of Tobago in the Antilles,
which Sweden had long coveted. By the Versailles con-
vention of July 1, 1784, he received the island of Saint
Bartholomew instead, which had hitherto belonged to
France, and he now assured to his ambassador all that
Necker desired, except indeed the title of Count and
the promise that he should hold his post for life. The
king engaged that after six years Staël's appoint-
ment should again be secured to him for another six
years. Who could guess that his appointment would
last much longer than the French monarchy itself? ‡
* Klinkowström, Le Compte Fersen et la Cour de France. Intro-
duction, xxxix.
+ Idem.
Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, i. 377, ii. 41.
COUNT FERSEN AND KING Gustavus,
145
Madame de Boufflers wrote in great delight to her
royal friend that she must confess the affair had
not only taken up her attention for a long time but
that it also had often very much fatigued her.
"The
first proposals," she says, "I made five years ago,
and for the last three years I have never ceased to
repeat them both verbally and in writing, so that I
hope this rich marriage may be of advantage to
Sweden."* On the 16th October, 1785, Fersen wrote
again to his father that at last the affair was decided,
and he himself delighted with the brilliant piece of
business Staël had accomplished. In this letter he
mentions that Mademoiselle Necker had preferred
the latter to Pitt, and ends by saying, "I saw her a
few days ago; she is the reverse of beautiful, but she
is very clever, cheerful, and amiable, and she is very
well brought up and full of talent. The wedding is
to be either on the 10th or the 15th of this month."
So much for Fersen. What love had not done was
accomplished by politics, and they separated the
chivalrous worshipper of the queen of France from
the friend of his youth and his friend's wife.
marriage suffered fresh delay owing to Mademoiselle
Necker's illness in the autumn, and the last difficulty
in this matter, which was treated as an affair of state,
arose on the part of the ever-scrupulous Necker, who
desired that the certificate of Staël's birth should be
The
Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron Staël.
D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 70-75.
* Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, i. 378.
VOL. I.
L
146
MADAME DE STAËL.
produced. "I knew, my dear fellow," wrote Gus-
tavus when he heard of this, "that a man had to be
good-looking and amiable, and an ambassador, if he
were to be a fit husband for Mademoiselle Necker, but
I was not aware that he was obliged to be signed and
sealed a good Christian. If you had said a word to
me on this subject I could have given you as good a
certificate as your parish priest, as I am Pope in my
Church. You were unaware that had you and Made-
moiselle Necker seen the light only ten or twenty
years sooner you could never have married at all,
for at that date there were no certificates anywhere
in Sweden. The practice has only come in of late.”*
A marriage, so entirely in accordance with the pre-
vailing ideas and usages, ought to have gained the
approval of the Paris of that day. This, however, was
not the case, if the Empress Catherine, who was kept
informed by innumerable letters, is to be believed.
On the contrary,
every one thought that Made-
moiselle Necker had made a very bad marriage."†
Marmontel asserts that he was the first to whom the
Staël project of marriage was confided, and Necker
set aside 650,000 francs as his daughter's portion, an
enormous sum for those days.‡
te
Count Guibert, their intimate friend, and, amongst
the older generation, one of Mademoiselle Necker's
* Geffroy, i. 378.
† Grimm and Catherine II., Correspondance. Recueil de la Société
Impériale de Russie, xxiii. 370.
‡ D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 74.
PORTRAIT OF MADEMOISELLE NECKER.
says
147
warmest admirers, wrote a sketch of her in the taste
of that day, calling her by the mythical name of
Zulmé. He gave out that he had borrowed his glow-
ing colours from a Greek poet, and amongst other
things he
of her: "Zulmé is about twenty years
old, but already one of the most honoured priestesses
of Apollo, whose incense is pleasant to him, and whose
voice he prefers to any other
Her large black
eyes sparkle with the fire of genius, and her ebon
locks fall in rich profusion on her shoulders. Her
features are more marked than gentle, there is some-
thing in them which promises more than the usual
fate of her sex."
.
Sainte-Beuve speaks of a portrait of her in her youth
which confirms this description, and says she was in
the fullness of her bloom, and had wavy hair, a clear
and honest expression, a high forehead, and lips apart
as if about to speak. The whole description of her
features spoke of amiability and cleverness, the blush-
ing cheeks betrayed quick and lively feelings, her
arms and neck were bare, her clothing gathered to-
gether in loose folds by a sash. We have seen the
picture from which his description is taken; it is
that of Rehberg, and was painted about that time.
The great French critic ended by saying that "the
bride led to the altar by Baron de Staël might recall
the Sophie in Emile."*
The marriage of the young couple took place with
* Sainte-Beuve, Portraits de Femmes: Madame de Staël.
L 2
148
MADAME DE STAËL.
all the splendour of their rank and position in society
in the Reformed Lutheran chapel attached to the
Swedish legation, one Saturday, the 14th of January,
1786, a few days after the king and queen of France
had witnessed and signed the marriage-contract.
CHAPTER IV.
Madame de Staël on Marriage-Baron de Staël's mystical tendencies
-The Mesmerists and Illuminati-Morals of the Clergy-Affair of
the Necklace-The Court at Fontainebleau-Abolition of Slavery
-Estrangement between Gustavus III. and Staël-Figaro-
Talleyrand-Influence of the Women-Rousseau and Hobbes-
The Bull Unigenitus-Madame Roland-Letters on Rousseau-
The Nouvelle Héloïse Rousseau's Morality antagonistic to
Christianity.
THE Official Gazette dated Feb. 3, 1786, chronicles
the appearance of Madame de Staël in Parisian society
and her presentation at Court. It sets forth that "the
Baronne de Staël-Holstein, wife of the envoy-extra-
ordinary of the king of Sweden, was presented on
the 31st of January to their majesties and the rest of
the royal family by M. de Tolozan, introducer of am-
bassadors, and M. de Sequeville, the king's first secre-
tary for the presentation of the said ambassadors.”*
On the same day the ambassadress was invited to
a dinner of forty-eight people presided over by the
Marquis de Talaru, the queen's high chamberlain.
The queen's lady-in-waiting, the Princesse de Chimay,
did the honours.
*
Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, i. 392, note,
150
MADAME DE STAËL.
•
The eventful day was not to come to an end with-
out some excitement, for in making the last of the
three customary curtsies to the queen, during which
the lady who is presented has to take hold of the
queen's skirt, and appear to kiss it, some lace on
Madame de Staël's train was torn, and she was re-
duced to the most pitiful state of embarrassment.
It would appear that her movements were a good
deal hampered by her short sight.* The king, who
was also present, said laughingly to her, "If you have
not confidence in us you can have it in no one." And
no less graciously Marie Antoinette summoned one of
her women to repair the disaster.†
Although the circumstance was insignificant, it gave
occasion to a flattering quatrain which found its way
into Grimm's Correspondance:
"Le timide embarras qui nait de la pudeur
Bien loin d'être un defaut est un belle grâce,
La modeste vertu ne connait pas l'audace,
Ni le vice effronté l'innocente rougeur,"
and to various unfriendly remarks on the part of the
Baroness Oberkirch, the first of the many detractors
Madame de Staël was destined to encounter among
her own sex. Her criticisms culminated somewhat
curiously in reproaching Necker's daughter for the
stiff manners and prudery of a Genevese woman,
although she undoubtedly possessed genius; and she
* Simond, Voyage en Suisse, i. 295.
† Lescure, Correspondance Secrète, &c. 1777-1792, ii. 13. Baronne
d'Oberkirch, Mémoires, ii. 206, the English translation.
OPINIONS ON YOUNG MADAME DE STAËL. 151
was further accused by those competent to judge
in those matters of being frequently ill-dressed.*
Madame de Boufflers was the next who had a good
deal of fault to find. Although she had principally
brought the marriage about, she anticipated wonder-
fully little satisfaction from its accomplishment. She
gave the young wife no time, but wrote to King
Gustavus immediately after the wedding: "I wish
I could think that Staël will be happy, although I
cannot believe that he will be. His wife has cer-
tainly been brought up with a strong sense of duty
and rectitude, but she lacks all knowledge of the
world and its ways. She is so persuaded of her own
superiority that it will be difficult to draw her atten-
tion to what she lacks. She is obstinate and domi-
neering, and possesses an assurance such as I have
never come across in any society, or in any woman
of her age. She passes thoughtless judgment upon
everything, and, although she is very clever, she often
says twenty things she had better have left unsaid
before she says the right one. The ambassador does
not venture to draw her attention to this, as he fears
to alienate her at the outset; I recommend him, how-
ever, to show firmness, as very often all future rela-
tions depend on the line first taken in these matters.
Her father's friends extol her to the skies; his enemies
cover her with ridicule; those who are neutral give
full justice to her understanding, but they accuse her
* Caro, La fin de la dix-huitième siècle. Études et Portraits,ii. 186.
La Jeunesse de Madame de Staël,
152
MADAME DE STAËL.
of talking too much, and of having more cleverness
than tact or common sense. If her head were not
turned by so much incense I should try to advise her
a little."*
If we consider that at the very outset this was the
judgment of so-called friends, what must antagonists
such as Rivarol and Madame de Genlis have had to
say? Good-will was never freely granted to Madame
de Staël; she had to work for it, and always in the
first instance to overcome prejudice and even dislike.
According to the prevalent custom, the newly-married
pair had to remain for some weeks under the paternal
roof before taking possession of the Swedish embassy
in the Rue de Bac. Since Necker's return, the family
had lived in a house in the Rue Bergère from 1781
to 1788, as they had let the Hôtel Leblanc somewhat
prematurely, for a term of years, on his accession to
office.
The letter in which the young wife took leave of
her paternal home has been preserved, and was
addressed to Madame Necker: "This evening," she
writes, "I shall not return. This is the last day I
shall spend as I have spent all the rest of my life.
How much this change costs me! I know not if
another mode of life be possible, as I have never tried
another, and the unknown adds to my sorrow.
know only too well, my mother, that I have failed in
my conduct towards you.
you. My actions rise up against
* Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, i. 384.
I
FAREWELL LETTER TO MADAME NECKER. 153
me at this moment as they would on my death-bed,
and I fear my departure may not cause you the
regret I would fain arouse. But pray believe that
imaginary shadows have often come between us and
have put me in an unfavourable light. Nevertheless,
I feel that the love brought to the surface on this
occasion has always been equally deep. It is a part
of my life, and the thought of our separation crushes
me.
"To-morrow I may return, but to-night I have to
sleep under another roof! I shall no longer have my
guardian angel by my side. She who would support
me in the hour of death, and cover me with the rays
of her beautiful spirit in God's presence, will no
longer be with me. I shall be unable to hear how
you are at any moment of the day, and in many
other respects I see how I shall miss you at every
instant. I cannot describe, dearest mother, how I
am strengthened by my love for you. You are so
pure and innocent that every thought connected with
you must be derived from Heaven. I
pray God to
make me worthy of you. Happiness may come later
on, by degrees, or it may not come at all; everything
in this world must have an end, and you are so sure
of a future life that neither can I have doubts on the
subject. I might write for ever without exhausting
my theme. Accept, my dear mother, my deep respect
and unalterable love.
"Thursday morning. Still at home." *
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 78.
154
MADAME DE STAËL.
The marriage ties might be privately or publicly
despised in the society of that day, wherein the Staël
couple first made their appearance, but the question
still remains whether the new life brought inward
happiness to the young wife from the standpoint then
in vogue.
Madame de Staël has only alluded to this herself
in a negative way, and that by unceasingly repre-
senting married bliss as the highest although the most
unattainable object of her desires.
A first indication on this subject occurs a short
time after her marriage; her last words on it is the
celebrated chapter at the close of her book on Ger-
many, on which she lavished her highest efforts and
most persuasive eloquence. An allusion to the situa-
tion between herself and her husband will have been
found, where Corinne, speaking of her lovers, men-
tions a distinguished German nobleman who had at
first won her esteem, but who on further acquaintance
had betrayed such a lack of intellectual distinction
that he could not retain this esteem. Some remarks
in her Letters on Jean Jacques Rousseau, published
in 1788 shortly after her marriage, are still of closer
import : "Rousseau may have intended to attack all
other social institutions, but marriage he never
attacked. How highly he valued the bond to which
we were destined by nature! How could he give us
more clearly to understand that he awaited our sal-
vation by this means than by proving to us that even
to hearts that have known other joys it brings con-
MADAME DE STAËL ON MARRIAGE
155
tent? Who can assert that such sacrifice is unknown
when Julie, the most luckless of women, was capable
of it ?"
But she nevertheless feels the danger threatened by
Rousseau's theories when she speaks of his system for
female education in the following terms: "Rousseau
would bring up women in the same way as men-by
the laws of nature; only definitely cultivating the
difference which nature has herself established be-
tween them. I do not know whether he is right thus
to uphold and, as it were, strengthen women in their
weakness. They require great self-control; their
passions and their impulses are always in opposition
to the customs of a country where they are, as a rule,
forbidden to give expression to their affections.'
""
And, passing on to the infidelity imputed by the
author to Emile's wife, Madame de Staël exclaims,
"Ah, Rousseau! that is a very false judgment of
women. Her heart may deceive her, but it will also
protect her. Not even the weakest of women would
allow herself to be drawn from the earthly paradise
and break loose from the chains of a marriage that
was grounded on love." *
So spoke Madame de Staël in those letters which
it has been rightly observed "were written before
the storm broke." When this occurred she was natu-
rally defenceless. Of what avail was this poetical
analysis of married love which neither recognised a
* Madame de Staël, Euvres complètes. Lettres sur J. J. Rousseau,
i. 1. Letter ii. Héloïse.
156
MADAME DE STAËL.
definite duty nor ethical motives independent of a
personal desire for happiness when it ceased, as
Rousseau describes, "to find its duty in inclination,
and to be virtuous from a natural impulse"?
Thus it happened, as under similar conditions it
was bound to happen, that the Staël marriage, after
a very few years, was virtually dissolved. Although
the innate uprightness of her inner nature could not
keep off actual shipwreck, at least it prevented
Madame de Staël from making unwarrantable com-
plaints as to her fate; she admitted that she had not
herself risked a sufficient stake to justify her in ex-
pecting to draw a prize.
Her husband, on the other hand, seemed at first
to have made the mistake-by no means unusual-
of supposing that after he had provided for all
worldly emergencies his wife's heart would likewise
fall to his share. When disenchantment on this
subject ensued he was the more disappointed. All
his friends testified that this woman had not only
inspired him with a passing fancy but with a feeling
of sincere affection.
One of these friends, Reuterholm, wrote even in
1793 to the chancellor of the duke-regent in Sweden:
"It is greatly to Staël's credit that he has never
ceased to be sincerely attached to his charming wife,
although she shows entire indifference to him."*
An indirect confirmation of this is certainly found in
* Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-
Holstein. Introduction, xii.
BARON STAËL'S MYSTICAL TENDENCIES.
157
Staël's correspondence with Reuterholm, which is by
no means uninteresting in other respects.
A characteristic trait of the waning eighteenth
century was its preference for everything dark and
secret, which in some took the form of enthusiastic
sentimental religious views, and in others that of
secret societies and superstitious practices of every
sort. Under the pretence of a thoroughly religious
education the pious beliefs of childhood were repu-
diated.
The much-abused craving for the supernatural and
eternal, so contemned by the materialists, took its
revenge in the culture of secret knowledge, in intro-
ducing new prophets, invocations of spirits, and
visions of every kind. Serious and even distinguished
men joined in these practices, but clever impostors
were much oftener mixed up in them. There was no
essential difference between material philosophy and
this kind of mysticism, which, under Mesmer and
Puységur, imagined it had found a universal panacea
in animal magnetism for all physical suffering and
the natural key to miracles: but at the same time
it struggled against the introduction of the super-
natural by means of somnambulism and second-sight,
and even formed a separate sect.
When Mesmer left Paris in 1781, the Sicilian,
Cagliostro, made his entry into that city; and later on,
during his Roman imprisonment, he gave himself out
as one of the messengers of the German sect of
158
MADAME DE STAËL.
Illuminati,* whose founder, Weishaupt the Bavarian,
with the assistance of adepts, such as Knigge, at-
tempted to imbue the political and secret masonic
societies in France with his own teaching, which in
its last expression was nothing more than the views
held by Rousseau as to property and society, and
hitherto followed out in their logical sequence.
In the opinion of Louis Blanc, Weishaupt was one
of the most remarkable impostors who ever lived,
but his plan fell to the ground. French freemasonry
preferred the more definite plan, and one moreover
started by Mirabeau, their own countryman-that of
a steady opposition to despotism or spoliation of civil
and religious liberty-to Weishaupt's ideal in the far
distance, which was however revived in part by
Fauchet and Babeuf.† Cagliostro subsequently was
known in another way; his notorious name is con-
nected with the affair of the necklace and with the
Cardinal Louis de Rohan, the best known and most
guilty of all its victims; whilst La Fayette may be
numbered amongst the most enthusiastic of Mesmer's
adherents.‡
The religious mysticism of that date was directed
to quite different regions of thought and feeling than
those of politics and materialism as represented by
* Henri Martin, Histoire de France, xvi. 531, 4th edition.
† Mirabeau, Mémoires, ii. livre vi. Lettre sur Cagliostro et Lavater,
1786.
La Fayette, Mémoires, ii. 93, and his Correspondence with George
Washington.
THE MESMERISTS AND ILLUMINATI.
159
Martinez, Pasqualis, St. Martin, Swedenborg, and
Lavater; through the pious and noble St. Martin it
may be traced back to Joseph Böhme, and in this way
is as much of German origin as the discoveries of
Mesmer and the plans of Weishaupt.
These religious and mystical tendencies had a
disciple in Baron de Staël, if not in his wife, and they
attracted him by their seductive resemblance to the
tone of thought in his own country. As always was
the case in the north, Sweden was specially favour-
able to them. "Your majesty is aware that Sweden
is the land of spirits, apparitions, and miracles,"
wrote Joseph de Maistre to his sovereign from St.
Petersburg, where he saw a great deal of Count
Stedingk and his compatriots. Without going further
back than the eighteenth century a marvellous ex-
ample is furnished in this respect by the great Lin-
Almost simultaneously with the appearance
of the first highly significant writings of the theo-
sophist St. Martin, which even attracted men holding
the same opinions as the Count J. de Maistre by
their profoundly Christian tenets, a first translation
of Swedenborg's Wonders of Heaven and Hell
appeared in Paris in 1783, Gustave III. showed
himself a true child of the times when, instead of
referring to this source of earnest religious thought, he
preferred to seek for comfort and instruction in the
muddy waters of the supernatural. He questioned
næus.
* A. Blanc, Mémoires et Correspondance Politique du Comte J. de
Maistre, 329.
160
MADAME DE STAËL.
adventuresses upon the future, believed in every sort
of apparition and prophecy, in the mysteries of the
lodge, and seriously busied himself during his stay in
Rome with the building of the Temple at Jerusalem.
Even the manly sympathy he lent to the Pretender
Charles Edward Stuart during his stay in Italy was
mingled with the design of being invested by him as
by the rightful king of Scotland in the succession to
the grand mastership of the freemasons held by him
at that time. The legend which pointed to the
Scottish king as being also the hereditary descendant
of the knights templar has been poetized in the Sons
of the Valley by Zacharias Werner.*
Whilst Gustavus III. was lost in these thoughts and
dreams, Charles, his brother, Duke of Sudermania,
invoked the spirits of darkness to find out how he
should supplant his brother and nephews on the
Swedish throne; a dangerous experiment, in which
exorcism more and more took the appearance of a
conspiracy. His confidant in this was Baron Reuter-
holm, his most intimate friend, who knew so well
how to use this disposition on the part of his princely
patron that he soon had him completely in his power.
Reuterholm, a zealous freemason, was the friend of
Baron de Staël and thoroughly shared his taste for
mystic ceremonies. Amongst the personnel of his
embassy a certain Halldin was specially appointed to
arrange all these rites and exorcisms.†
* Reumont, Die Gräfinn von Albany, i. 239-240.
† Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, ii: 247, &c.
STAËL AND REUTERHOLM.
161
A letter from Staël to Reuterholm, after the long
stay of the latter in Paris, Avignon, and Rome, from
1789 to 1790, in the interest of the Illuminati and
freemasons, gives us a closer insight into the extra-
ordinary state of mind he was in. "My dear
friend," he writes to Reuterholm, "I have spent
many bitter hours since your departure. If I knew
how to bear my cross my fate would be more endur-
able, but the old Adam prevails. I cannot sincerely
follow the guidance of God, whose power and mercy
are infinite. When I think of all the evil 1 have done
and all the good I have left undone, I feel that I
deserve to be a thousand times more tried than I
have been. Pray for me, my friend, that my feeble
faith may be strengthened. My heart is heavy and
tears choke my utterance.
Pray, ah pray, that my
trial may teach me and turn me towards the right
path. Oh to attain that faith which leads to the
arms of the Comforter! May God keep you and
bless you!
... I have deserved my present suffer-
ing. I am punished in my innermost feelings, but I
still dare to think that notwithstanding all my faults
my heart has remained steadfast. Pray for my wife.
May she never suffer from the torment I endure."*
Thus ran many pages, and it is easy to guess what
manner of trial induced Baron de Staël to pray for
higher consolation.
* Geffroy, Gustave IV. et la Cour de France, ii. 271; and more
fully in, Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de
Staël-Holstein. Introduction, xxi.-xxiii.
VOL. I.
M
162
MADAME DE STAËL.
*
Although, judging by letters like this, he might
occasionally be discouraged and weighed down, this
did not prevent his outwardly leading a brilliant ex-
istence and one highly satisfactory to his ambition.
The letters of the day repeatedly mention the ambas-
sador as devoted to gambling. On the occasion of
a ball given by him at Versailles no provision was
made for the servants, who, wearied with hunger and
with waiting in the cold, gave such loud expression to
their discontent that it was with the utmost difficulty
they could be silenced. The luxury of Baron de
Staël's table was accounted so great that the queen
requested Necker to make friendly representations to
the young wife that they should not exceed their
income. In allusion to this the Baronne de Staël
wrote to her husband from St. Ouen to Paris, "I beg
you, my dear, to invite Madame de Simiane to our
dinner on Thursday; one extra person makes no
difference, and whatever they may say we shall not
be ruined, 'They,' however, are not altogether to
be disregarded. It was the queen herself who begged
M. de Castries to say to my father that she feared we
might get into difficulties and that he must look after
us. This made my father give me a lecture, as he
was much struck by the warning, and above all much
touched by the queen's kindness. He is sure to tell
about it, but I do not think he will say as much
Goncourt,
you
* Lescure, Correspondance Secrète Inédite, 1777-1792.
Histoire de la Société Française pendant la Révolution, 24.
† Lescure, Idem, ii. 221.
LITERARY PASTIMES.
163
to you as he has to me, for I feel, just as he does, that
it is difficult to express affection for people in that
rank; there are so many who only feign it. As a
fact I have always observed, that, in a special way
of his own, he praised her intelligence, her nobility,
her kindness; always took her part if she were
attacked in any way in his presence; and, above all,
I noticed how sad he became whenever he heard that
she still kept up her interest in him.
"Women's talent lies in their instinct, and I guess
every thought in those I love. As you are going to
Versailles, be sure you remember me to M. de Ver-
gennes-it will please him.
"Be so good as to order the dinner. Sixteen courses
should be enough I think-you see the queen's pre-
cepts are taking effect! Good-bye, my dear friend.”*
The chief literary effort of Madame de Staël during
those years was her correspondence with Gustavus III.
giving him all the Parisian news that could be of
interest to him.
The first of these bulletins, which she begged her
royal correspondent to burn when read,† is dated
March 11, 1786, and is an answer to an autograph
letter from the king, whose acquaintance she was
never to make.
Meanwhile Cagliostro and his wife had been thrown
into the Bastille, and "he aroused universal sympathy.
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 187.
† Letters of Madame de Staël in the University Library at Upsala.
To King Gustavus from Madame de Staël, undated, 1787.
M 2
164
MADAME DE STAËL.
In this country the victims of the law have the public
always on their side, and for a short time an effort
was made to arouse it in favour of the cardinal. The
cardinal is Prince Louis de Rohan, the hero of the
necklace affair, by whose deadly snares the queen
had been calumniated. The contempt he is held
in," continues Madame de Staël, "is so thorough,
that no strong feeling can be aroused for or against
him. We shall have no nuncio in France till the
cardinal's trial is over
"Madame de Genlis lately inherited 200,000 francs
from the Maréchale d'Estrées: she owes us an account
of this sum, as the public generally knows all about
her private affairs.
"The queen and king both received me most
graciously; she told me that she had long wished to
make my acquaintance: the dinner was more splendid
than any that had ever been given for an ambassadress.
A week after I dined with the Spanish ambassa-
dress at M. de Vergennes: he led us both to table, so
that there should be no difficulty about precedence.
I notice these marks of politeness as they are no
longer personal to me. The queen's balls were
especially brilliant this winter. The ball-rooms were
like a fairy palace. They were like the gardens of
the Trianon, and the fountains played all the while.
The pleasures and attractions of all this courtly splen-
dour recalled the open-air delights of the summer
time. Close by, in another room, the less ideal
occupation of card-playing was carried on to an un-
MORALS OF THE CLERGY.
165
limited extent.
A young M. de Castellane has left
the paternal roof, having lost everything he possessed.
The queen, however, sets the example of moderation,
and it is not to please her that people ruin them-
selves; but gamblers care for no other occupation, as
they have accustomed themselves to this great excite-
ment and its dangers
The Maréchal de Duras
6
was waited on the other day by a young débutante.
The Comédie Française is under his control as first
chamberlain. 'Well, my young lady,' said he 'what
parts do you wish to appear in first ?' 'It is quite the
same to me; I can take either comedy or tragedy,
anything that is wanted." And who taught you
elocution?' 'Ah! that was an abbé who took great
interest in me. He took an extraordinary amount of
trouble, but he was not the most useful of all to me.'
'And who, my young lady, may that have been?'
'A vicar-general, of whom I may say that he really
loved me and improved my talent in the most remark-
able degree.' 'Well,' said the maréchal, this gets
better and better. Is that all, mademoiselle?' 'No,
sir; a bishop is my chief benefactor; he gives me
lessons, and if necessary he will recommend me.'
"The names connected with this perfectly authentic
anecdote are those of the Abbé Délille, the Abbé
d'Espagnac, and Jarente the coadjutor at Orleans.
This I think may be called a thoroughly French
story.
"The public has busied itself greatly with the
agiotage of the Abbé d'Espagnac and the fortunes he
166
MADAME DE STAËL.
helped the Duke of Orleans and others to make by
this means. It seems the king has expressed his dis-
pleasure that an abbé should follow such an occupa-
tion. The abbé has been dismissed by his chapter,
all because he had not the wisdom to hold his tongue.
If he had kept silence his reputation would have been
smaller, but his fortune would have increased. Taking
it altogether, money is preferable to this kind of
notoriety. The controller-general, under whose admi-
nistration it could be possible to amass a consider-
able fortune by such means, certainly may be reckoned
among those who do not get angry about what they
see themselves, but only about what others force them
to see."
This finance minister was Calonne, of whom Ma-
dame de Staël does not hesitate to tell the following
anecdote in another place: "Not long ago a discus-
sion arose at table when Calonne was present con-
cerning the finance ministers of the reign of Louis
XIV. A friend of the minister's mentioned the
immense fortune made by his predecessors in office,
and, recalling Mazarin and Richelieu, regretted that
such fortunes could no longer be amassed. 'Excuse
me,' interrupted Calonne, 'the business is not yet
destroyed.' It would be better," says Madame de
Staël, "not to say such things, at any rate at
table."
•
Further on she says, "The Cardinal de Rohan is
having a sad time at his abbey in Auvergne. The
beautiful Countess de Brionne, who upholds the car-
THE AFFAIR OF THE NECKLACE.
167
dinal, ought to meet with sympathy, but she is so
theatrical in her grief, that although it is quite
genuine it seems like acting.'
د,
Madame de Staël has not a word to say in favour
of the most injured queen, although the necklace
trial, which lasted nine months, almost entirely
engrossed public attention during that year, but we
gather from Baron de Staël's despatches what was
thought in the Neckers' house upon the subject. "It
seems certain," he writes, "that M. de Vergennes
and M. de Calonne have gone against the queen, and
that instead of trying to diminish the feeling against
her they do all they can to increase it. It is much to
be deplored that the queen has no one upon whom
she can rely to advise her, and that, with her other
amiable qualities, the strength necessary to assert
her innocence is absent, but she needs guidance and
support.
"Those around her seem to show her no consider-
ation at the present moment; for instance, the
Polignacs and the Vaudreuils are most zealous in the
cardinal's cause, and even the Comte d'Artois has
testified warm sympathy towards him. I cannot dis-
cover that the queen altogether enlists the sympathy
that she deserves. She has succeeded less in her
wish to please than any one in a private position
would have done. This is, perhaps, a proof that
notwithstanding the frivolity of the nation it expects
prominent merit from its sovereigns, and only accepts
them in proportion to what they have accomplished
168
MADAME DE STAËL.
The celebrated sculptor Houdon has
brought back a bust of Washington from America.
It has the coldest features I have ever seen in my
life, and it is amusing to compare them with those
of Cagliostro. One might almost think it impossible
for Washington to interest himself warmly in any-
thing, and certainly one would imagine that he was
indifferent to renown. He is like those doctors who
do not believe in their profession.
Figaro has
reached its ninety-second representation. Beaumar-
chais said lately that the success of the piece would
only be decided after the hundred and fiftieth.
""
Madame de Staël's account of the visit of the
Archduchess Christina and her husband, Duke Albert
of Saxony, closes with the words, "The Parisian
society becomes daily more uninteresting; no one
cares nowadays to shine in it, and if it were not for
cards no excitement could be had."
The next bulletin is written the same year, and
dated November 1786. It busies itself with details
about the court, which King Gustavus wanted to
know. This time the journey to Fontainebleau,
undertaken every autumn by the king and queen,
gave her material. "Dinners and suppers," the young
ambassadress relates, "are the only events of the
day. Three times a week people sup with Madame
de Polignac, three times with Madame de Lamballe,
and once in the queen's intimate circle. She gene-
rally appears at eleven o'clock in the evening, and
plays a game of billiards, which are much in fashion,
THE COURT AT FONTAINEBLEAU.
169
At midnight this circle disperses and betakes itself
elsewhere.
"Games of chance are absolutely forbidden, but
other games are all the more sought after.
"The sole pleasure of a hostess appears to consist
in settling her guests as quickly as possible at tric-
trac or at a quinze table.
"There was, moreover, such a crowd at Fontaine-
bleau that people could only amuse themselves with
the two or three others seated at the same table.
The chief pleasure consisted in allowing oneself to
be nearly crushed to death. The crowd around the
queen was especially dreadful. It is not possible to
lend greater charm and amiability to politeness than
she does. Without letting others forget that she is
queen she appears never to think of it herself. The
expression and bearing of those who await notice
from her is worth study. Some seek to attract atten-
tion by laughing loudly at the remarks of those at the
same table with them, although under other circum-
stances they would hardly smile; others endeavour
to look absent, and thus to hide the thought that is
uppermost with them; they resolutely turn their
heads the other way, but cannot prevent their eyes
following every step the queen takes; others, if she
makes a remark to them about the weather, consider
this a chance not to be despised, and pour out a flood
of conversation. There were some, however, who
showed respect without servility, and a wish to
please without unseemly effort.
The king of.
170
MADAME DE STAËL.
France does not appear in this society. He is only
seen in the morning and the evening at the customary
ceremonies, and on Sunday in solemn state. He is
never present at the queen's card-playing. He hunts
or reads. If he is doing neither it is funnily re-
marked that ‘his majesty is doing nothing to-day,'
which means that he is busy with his ministers.
During this year's journey he gave various indi-
viduals of doubtful reputation convincing proofs of
his disapproval, and this raised the impression that
both the king and queen desired their surroundings
should be distinguished for their uprightness and
thorough respectability.
“Baron de Breteuil has a project of introducing an
edict to increase the security of Protestant marriages
and to settle their civil rights, and this has been much
talked about in Fontainebleau. It certainly is very
dishonourable now-a-days for one of the interested
parties to find an excuse for divorce in the religious
creed; nevertheless, such a law continues to exist,
and only custom prevents its being put into shameful
operation. .
"The Chevalier de Boufflers gave a notable example
of self-sacrifice at the end of this year when he went
to Senegal for the second time to arrange about
sugar-plantations for the negro population, and thus
to encourage voluntary cultivation in place of the
forced labour, which was at the bottom of all the
miseries of the poor blacks.
"What an honour to the country would be the
THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.
171
emancipation of the slaves," remarks Madame de
Staël. "The man who could accomplish it would
have done more good than any one had ever done
before. But it is dreadful to have to confess that
the negroes, if left to themselves, are idle and hate
work, and this is the argument against granting them
freedom.
"The Chevalier de Boufflers told me some heart-
rending facts. Thus the Europeans have a plan of
seizing old men and women. As the negroes are
patterns of filial piety, as soon as they hear of their
parents' capture they give themselves up in their
place. In this way the barbarous European merchants
often obtain two strong young men instead of an old
man, and draw profit from the virtues of these negroes,
whose natural gifts they are quite right in considering
to be very different from their own."
At the time Madame de Staël wrote, her friends
Wilberforce and Romilly were proposing to lead the
great crusade against the slave-trade. Romilly relates
how in April 1789, shortly before the discussion in the
House of Commons, he wrote, in the name of his
supporters, to Necker, to invite the co-operation of
France. M. Necker's answer was very flattering to
them, but gave them so little reason to hope for the
concurrence of France that they thought it advisable
not to publish it, and so his name does not appear in
the list of the liberators of the human race.
In his book upon financial administration Necker
shows that the greatest difficulty in the abolition of
172
MADAME DE STAËL.
slavery lay in replacing that trade by another equally
advantageous. Wilberforce profited by the situation
to express his conviction that France, at least, would
not be the country to enrich itself by this means at
the expense of England.*
Later on, Madame de Staël took up the thread in
this matter which had slipped from her father's hands,
for in 1814 she appealed to the allied sovereigns in
favour of the abolition of slavery.
The fourth
and last bulletin written for King Gustavus by Madame
de Staël already bears signs of the growing excite-
ment, and is dated 1787.
"Paris has been so occupied for the last six months
with public affairs that not only do private affairs
excite no interest but they have come to a deadlock,
as people recognise how useless all individual attempts
are to excite attention. I am tempted to be angry
with
my friends and acquaintances for their inactivity,
as it deprives me of anything to tell your majesty
about them."
The political event of the day was the banishment
of the Duke of Orleans, who, in a public sitting of
the Parisian Parlement on the 19th November, 1787,
replied to the king's request for a supplemental tax
amounting to 440 millions that the Estates-General
alone had the right to settle this and all other
taxation.
Only the necessary social relations existed between
* Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, 1840, i. 343, 345,
April, 1789.
THE DUKE OF ORLEANS.
173
Madame de Staël and the duke. She never took him
seriously, and, when his instructions for the elections
of 1789 required that he should take up the divorce
question, Madame de Staël thanked him in the name
of the ladies at a ball given by the Duke of Dorset.
"Oh," replied the duke, "I always try to do what
may be agreeable to them."*
She shows a certain amount of contempt in her
opinion of him which may be seen in the following:
"The duke is so bored in his exile that he has written
to the king to allow him, at least, to live at his
château of Raincy, in the neighbourhood of Paris.
The duke has done himself a great deal of harm by
this request. If a man wishes to uphold his actions
he ought not to own himself in the wrong, which he
does by seeking to have his punishment lightened,
It was remarked to the archbishop of Toulouse
that his banishment would give him an opportunity
of rehabilitating himself. 'Oh, I know him,' was the
reply, 'he will miss his opportunity.' As a matter of
fact the Government would be ill-advised to aggra-
vate the exile, as it would not be popular with the
public.
"It is the habit of the Duke of Orleans to fill the
places at his disposal with people who do not suit
them at all. Thus he has appointed a naval officer
as the chancellor of his household. Monsieur de la
Touche, the officer in question, thought that he was
being made fun of, and went in his naval uniform to
* Lord Auckland, Memoirs and Correspondence, ii. 305.
174
MADAME DE STAËL.
the duke; 'Monseigneur,' he said, 'I present myself
in uniform to remind you, in case it has been for-
gotten, that I am a sailor, and that I am incapable of
adding up a sum, and therefore am quite unsuitable
for the situation.' That is exactly what I want,'
replied the duke. After de la Touche had asserted
his incapacity he no longer hesitated to accept an
income of 100,000 francs, as the duke wished it.
"The latter is of such a merry turn of mind that I
am often tempted to think that his chief desire is to
do whatever will give himself and others the most to
laugh at. Nothing amuses him more than to hold
himself up to derision.
وو
A remark on the religious dissensions of that period
may not be thought out of place, as it again testifies
how strongly Madame de Staël felt the injustice of
the French laws from a Protestant point of view. She
writes: "Madame de Noailles is the craziest of all
pious Catholics and at the same time the most super-
stitious. She keeps up an incessant correspondence
with the Pope and is a pillar of the Church, whilst
she preaches intolerance like any of the Fathers. No
sooner had she discovered that the king had proposed
an edict for the amelioration of the civil rights of
Protestants, than she went into such a state of de-
speration that she will certainly fall a victim to the
warmth of her feelings if the edict is made law;
which it probably will be.
"In a book of hers, which shall reach your majesty
by the next courier, she has put together all the his-
SITUATION OF THE PROTESTANTS.
175
torical occasions on which Protestants were in the
wrong, so as to awaken a dread of toleration. The
book is not bad, once we admit its object; and it is
well put together, if we could forget that it is un-
reasonable. What surprises me, however, is that it
should influence any one. We are so apt to imagine
that the century is enlightened because those imme-
diately around us are free from prejudice—and yet
half France is probably under the shadow of super-
stition. Those especially who do not read make no
advance the people change their opinions but never
moderate them. I further send the memorial started
by the maréchale which she sent to all the members
of parliament along with the following note: The
Maréchale de Noailles presents herself to M. N. that
she
may recommend the interests of religion and law
confided to the care of Parliament.'
"I further add the excellent work of the equally
learned and sensible Malesherbes. He is one of the
most enlightened men in France, and would be an
excellent minister without a portfolio. But he him-
self confesses that his capacity is not backed by cor-
responding energy. What he initiates should be
carried out by others."*
It is not altogether uninteresting to compare these
remarks of Madame de Staël with the impressions simul-
taneously formed on the same subject by the Genevan
*Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, i. 388-412,. ii.
Appendix, 430-437, and 439-444. Bulletin des Nouvelles de Madame
de Staël.
:
176
MADAME DE STAËL.
Protestant Mallet du Pan. He writes:-"The edict
in favour of the Protestants always meets with fresh
delay. It is curious to find the public divided in its
opinions on such a subject, and all the antiquated fears
and silly ideas of the dark ages brought to life again.
"It shows that we are still a long way off from
enlightenment. The Maréchale de Noailles sells and
distributes a libel written by the Abbé Beauregard at
her request. The monks in the cloisters elevate the
host and implore Heaven to enlighten the king and
avert the misfortune of toleration. Malesherbes has
written a thick book in favour of the Protestants, as
if there were anything left to say on the subject.
The majority of the Parisians are opposed to the
Toleration Edict. On all hands remarks upon it are
to be heard as at the time of the League. The
people and the Government are equally despondent
on this subject, so that it is already held to be a
great concession to legalise Calvinist baptism and
marriage.
The Protestants are endured
although scarcely tolerated." *
The year 1788 found the Swedish king on the
borders of Finland, leading the war against Russia,
which was above all to serve as a means towards
freeing himself from family and public relations which
had become unbearable.
Whilst this went on in the north the prologue to
the drama was being enacted in France, which left
* Mallet du Pan, Analecte sur l'Histoire du Temps. Unpublished
family papers, 1787.
ESTRANGEMENT BETWEEN GUSTAVUS III. AND STAËL 177
no time for the interchange of harmless literary and
social news.
From this date the epistolary inter-
course between the young ambassadress and her
sovereign was limited to a few letters, which could
no longer prevent the ever-increasing misunderstand-
ing between him and her husband or allay the dis-
satisfaction of the king. The relations between him
and his representative in Paris, although binding in
appearance, had never from the first been quite sin-
cere and confidential in their nature. The prince
held all kingly prerogatives to be unassailable, whilst
his minister at the court of Versailles had long been
of opinion that the rights of kings should be limited.
The breach was unavoidable when these doctrines
were put to the proof by the course of events.
The first indication of a change was the delay in
granting the decoration promised in the marriage-
contract to Baron de Staël, and of which his wife
had in vain made mention in 1788 on the occasion of
an especial mark of favour,* when the king assented
to giving his name to her first child, which was a
daughter. It died almost directly after its birth,
and is not mentioned in any biography of Madame
de Staël, although Saint Lambert thought it necessary
to comfort Madame Necker on being now a grand-
mother, and the latter wished that her grandchild
should grow up in the fear of God, as the thing most
to be desired.
* Letters from Madame de Staël in the possession of the Library
of the University of Upsala. Madame de Staël to Nils Rosenstein.
VOL. I.
N
178
MADAME DE STAËL.
•
From this time the Neckers' salon in the Rue
Bergère or at St. Ouen became more and more that
of Madame de Staël, who oftener received there, for
her invalid mother, than at the Swedish embassy,
her own home in the Rue de Bac: or she received at
Versailles when the residence of the court at that
place required her to do so.* The old friends,
Diderot, d'Alembert, Lord Stormont, Galiani, Creutz,
Thomas, were dead or had left Paris. Buffon was to
follow in 1788, and, according to Grimm's consider-
ably exaggerated and not unbiassed words, "they.
close the lists of the greatest period France has ever
known."
Of the friends and guests of early days Marmontel,
Grimm, Suard, Morellet, Saint Lambert, Chastellux,
Guibert, the Duchess of Lauzun, Madame d'Houdedot,
led the way for an entirely different generation, which
the new days had already brought to the front. Side
by side with the old names those of the future
started up.
The Journey of the Young Anacharsis appeared
in 1788. A year earlier Volney had published his
travels in Syria and Egypt. The Studies of Ber-
nardin de St. Pierre bear the date of 1784; the idyl
of Paul and Virginia had been written long before,
but only appeared in the year 1787.
* Geffroy, Gustave III. et la Cour de France, Appendix, ii. 447.
Madame de Staël à Gustave III. Juin, 1787. Madame de Créquy,
Lettres Inédites à Sénac de Meilhan, Juillet 25, 1787.
Gérando, Lettres Inédites de Madame de Staël, &c. 55.
Baronne de
Madame de
Staël à Gérando, 1803.
FIGARO.
179
Unknown to the public Greek by birth and
genius — André Chénier, the greatest lyric poet of
the eighteenth century, which hitherto had been so
prosaic in France, was steadily developing fruits that
could never fully ripen, "because poetry was slain
by the Revolution, and the poet by the Terrorists;"*
because, in the words of Ducis, another poet, "when
tragedies were being enacted day by day in the
streets there was no use in writing them."
The 27th of April, 1784, is memorable in theatrical
history. On that day Figaro was played for the first
time, and Beaumarchais experienced an unequal
triumph when he induced the leaders of French so-
ciety joyously to applaud their own death-warrant.
The court, the nobility, the high officials, the princes
of the blood, with the queen at their head, listened to
the undying words: "J'étais né pour être courtisan.
On dit que c'est un métier si difficile. Recevoir,
prendre, et demander, c'est le secret en trois mots.
La place demandait un administrateur-ce fut un
danseur qui l'obtint."
And the monologue,
"Non, monsieur le comte, vous ne l'aurez pas-vous
ne l'aurez pas. Parce que vous êtes un grand seigneur
vous vous croyez un grand génie! Noblesse, fortune,
un rang, des places, tout cela rend si fier. Qu'avez-
vous fait pour tant de biens? Vous vous êtes donné
la peine de naître et rien de plus."
One individual only, usually ready for any joke,
* Nisard, Histoire de la Littérature Française, iv. 158.
N 2
180
MADAME DE STAËL.
""
laughed not on this occasion. "Never have I been
in worse company than at this celebrated marriage,'
wrote the Empress Catherine,* shaking her head over
the sort of entertainment that was appreciated in
Paris. With the dramatic poet Beaumarchais, the
most distinguished authors in these years
years immediately
preceding the Revolution were Mirabeau and Rivarol;
and it is said of them that Beaumarchais issued the
manifesto of the Revolution, Mirabeau brought it
about, and Rivarol fought it.†
Rivarol, surrounded by a small group of true
friends and ill-natured tongues, employed the dread-
ful weapons of mockery and satire incessantly in
society, and he was soon to direct them against
Madame de Staël as he had done against Necker.
Eventually his real fighting weapon became the
political pamphlet. But Mirabeau, in whose spirit
rebellion blazed into a clear flame, was as yet person-
ally almost unknown in Paris, although his political
ideas had already been expressed in numerous pamph-
lets. People at that time were only busied with his
immense reputation and his family history, his law-
suits, his imprisonment at Vincennes; the scandal with
his father, who, by means of lettres de cachet, had
all his belongings put in prison; with his mother,
who fired a pistol at her son one day because he spoke
of reconciliation with her husband.
* Grimm and Catherine II., Correspondance, Recueil de la Société
Impériale de l'Histoire de Russie, 1878, xxiii. 334.
† Chênedollé in Sainte Beuve, Chateaubriand et son Groupe Littéraire,
ii. 177.
TALLEYRAND.
181
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, abbé de Périgord,
born in 1754, had, on the contrary, filled a brilliant
position for some years in Parisian society. Talley-
rand, who, on account of a deformed foot, had been
destined by his parents for the Church, filled the re-
sponsible position in the capital, of agent-general for
the clergy, although his thoughts were already full of
other and more important subjects. A cardinal's hat
was coveted for the abbé, then scarcely thirty years
old; and in the autumn of 1784 the beautiful Madame
de Brienne had already asked the king of Sweden,
who was then in Rome, to use his influence with Pius
VI. in his favour. Whether he ever did so we have
no means of knowing. This hat belonged, however,
to the very few things Talleyrand did not receive in
the course of his life. As bishop of Autun, the year
1789 already found him at the head of a group of
elegant and distinguished men, such as Narbonne,
Jaucourt, Lauzun, and many others of the same sort,
who boasted of having carried the art of refined en-
joyment, intellectual taste, and familiar intercourse,
to the highest perfection.
Personal identities and social circumstances had,
however, sensibly changed during the last twenty
years. The comparatively few salons, by means of
which social centres an entrance into the great world
could be achieved, had for the most part ceased to
exist, and their influence was never resumed.
Existence had become more complicated, the houses
in which celebrated men were to be met were now
·
182
MADAME DE STAËL.
far more numerous; literature began to be oppressed
by politics. In the same way as tea had taken the
place of coffee in the English fashion, it was said that
the old customs of French life had vanished before
other habits.
Horse-racing began to be the fashion, whist was
played, and boston after the American war, dress
became simpler, and the heavy embroidered damasks
with gold and silver brocade were replaced by muslin
and simple stuffs; powder, feathers, and laces gave
way to plain ribbons and simple hair-dressing. Men
no longer wore their daggers. Clothes were worn à la
J. J. Rousseau, coats à la Franklin, and the portrait
of the beloved object was worn as an ornament in the
hair, were it that of a husband, child, friend, cat, or
dog. It became the fashion to make a long stay in
the country. In the same way as Marie Antoinette
went from Versailles to the Trianon, the nobility and
rich financial set left Paris for their properties and
country-houses, where Florian's pastoral poems and
Berquin's pedantic sketches of family life were realised
in poetical fétes. A whole quantity of poems-The
Seasons by St. Lambert, The Months by Roncher,
The Garden by Delille, and the prose of the Prince
de Ligne entitled Coup d'Oeil sur Bel Oeil, taking
his own park for his subject-testified to the taste for
woods, fields, and meadows that had been awakened
in these satiated beings.
The Duc de Broglie gave the word "Love your
wives and your homes."
homes." Although spent in the
SOCIAL CONDITIONS CHANGE.
183
country, the life was not any more serious or more
natural, and it continued to be equally costly and
corrupt, although outwardly blameless. With an in-
come of 600,000 francs people felt themselves to be
the slaves of their rank.
"I really only feel my riches by the burden they
impose," said the Duchesse d'Estissac to Bonstetten;
"and ah! what delicious milk is to be had in your
mountains."*
But in the parks and in the pastorals no less than
in the splendour of the Parisian hotels people alike
aimed at unclouded gaiety, covering all the pitfalls
of existence with flowers, and turning away from
grief and self-denial as from what not only was pain-
ful, but was contrary to all the true philosophy of life.
Manners even among the lower classes were apparently
so refined, that Jefferson, who was by no means partial
to the French, remarked in 1785 that here one might
pass a life without encountering a single rudeness. He
had never met a drunken man.† In the same year,
1785, an English traveller, Andrews, also took away
the impression that in France the highest object of
existence was to spend it in unclouded merriment.‡
Such perfection was attained in this respect that
sociability and cheerfulness followed this light-hearted
race from palace to prison, to the law-court and the
* Karl Morell, K. V. von Bonstetten ein Lebensbild, 68.
† Jefferson, Complete Works, Correspondence, i. 443.
Taine, Les Origines de la France Contemporaine. L'Ancien
Régime, i. 191.
184
MADAME DE STAËL.
:
scaffold, and, almost without exception, death was
heroically and often smilingly encountered. This
epicurean art of existence would have wanted spice
if it had not punished everything that opposed it, cast
aside all experience and authority which had at any
time undervalued the state of things it advocated.
Sire," said the Maréchal de Richelieu to Louis
XVI., "under Louis XIV. people did not dare to
speak; under Louis XV. people talked in whispers ;
under your Majesty's Government they speak out."
The first clubs were instituted and soon became
political centres. Galiani had already said that
"Paris was no longer the salon but the café for all
Europe." Diderot's Neveu de Rameau gave point to
this criticism, which soon became a truism. Members
of the House of France led the opposition. The Duke
of Orleans contributed no mean sum towards the pub-
lication of pamphlets which educated public opinion,
as newspapers did not then exist, or at least were
only represented by a few official organs such as the
Gazette and the Mercure de France. When the
Revolution broke out it was headed by noblemen
who were ready to speak and to fight, priests who
could organize, bishops who could bless, princes who
could pay for it, and a king who could allow it to
happen. Nothing was too venturesome for this race.
Everything might be said or done if only the manner
of doing it were correct, pleasing, and piquant.
"Truth does not excite me, only novelty." Count-
less contemporaries shared these sentiments of Sénac
•
THE WOMEN IN SOCIETY.
1.85
de Meilhan, who was considered to be a supporter of
what already existed.* They never for an instant
doubted that the Reign of Reason had set in, over-
coming all traditions, and that they themselves were
destined to renew the golden age.
It is of these years that Talleyrand said that no
one who had not lived previous to 1789 could form
any idea of the seductive charm of existence.
If the men had this impression how could the
women resist the overpowering seduction of all that
unfolded itself before them like a fête? It was for
them that the darkest problems of philosophy strove
for clearness of expression, that learning became epi-
grammatic and eloquent, and that the driest theories
hid themselves under attractive forms.
All observers of the social conditions of that time
in Paris and France have testified to the overwhelm-
ing influence of the women. Scarcely any one has
described it better than Roederer, who in 1787 was
in his prime, and subsequently alludes to it in these
terms:-"Who can tell how much the learning in
France owes to social intercourse and to the desire
of clever men to make women understand what they
meant? Serious study is so difficult for women that
their teachers are obliged to be clear in their mean-
ing. Fontenelle wrote his Celestial Bodies for the
Marquise de Lambert; Voltaire Newton's Philosophy
for the Marquise de Châtelet; Madame Lavoisier was
* Nisard, Histoire de la Littérature Française, iv. 126.
186
MADAME DE STAËL.
initiated in her husband's chemical discoveries before
any one else
I myself saw the equally beau-
tiful and charming Madame de Fourcroy mix with
her husband's colleagues with intelligent interest.
"Madame de Condorcet was introduced to the study
of the deepest philosophical subjects by her family;
the book written by this unusually clever and fasci-
nating woman on Adam Smith's theory of moral sen-
timents is a witness of this.
"Need I remark how much the presence of eight
or nine of the most celebrated women of the capital
and the court, and by their presence and their dis-
cussions before and after the debate, contributed to
the eloquence of our greatest orators during the
sitting of the Constituante. May I be allowed to say ·
that the Revolution of 1789 was accomplished by
public opinion; that this public opinion was formed
and ripened in assemblies where woman's voice was
heard, and that her share in the Revolution largely
contributed to its permanence.
"The interests, rights, desires, fears of the mothers
of families, sisters, wives, were in sympathy with the
law-givers, and it was unnecessary for them to procure
a hearing to be understood." *
Strangers were all of the same opinion, such as
Mallet du Pan the Genevan, and the Americans
Jefferson and Morris. It is true that Mallet com-
plains that Parisian women are characteristically
*Roederer, Fragments de divers Mémoires concernant la Société Polie
en France. Paris, 1834.
INFLUENCE OF THE WOMEN.
187
devoid of any trace of real deep womanly feeling and
innocent charm, but he admits their unequalled
intellectual vitality.
Jefferson, the stiff republican, makes fun of the way
these women spend their day, beginning with visits
at 11 o'clock, paid at the ladies' bedside, and barely
allowing for a turn through the Palais Royale
between their forenoon toilette and the hairdresser;
and a further half-hour's stroll through the streets
after dinner as their only exercise; in the evening,
visits and the theatre; supper and card-playing
prolonged far into the night. But, however much he
may have to find fault, he confesses in the end that
the opinion of the young and beautiful women who all
favour the Tiers is more powerful than all the king's
200,000 men. He goes even further, and considers
that by the women's influence the fate of France will
be decided. No system of reformation had hitherto
included such an influence, and happily nothing of
the kind existed in his country. If such were the
influence and position of the fair sex it is certainly
worth while to ask what use it had made of them, and
on which side of the scales, history, the great judge of
all human events, has found the weight of its share in
events, and the measure of its tremendous respon-
sibility?
The question can only be solved by recalling the
line taken by the women in reference to the intel-
lectual supremacy contemporaneous with the
188
MADAME DE STAËL.
American war, which at that time encountered
fierce opposition, although almost unrivalled in
regard to thought, imagination, and politics, between
1780 and 1790. This was the supremacy of Rousseau.
All are agreed on this point. Grimm, of whom
Rousseau wrote that he was the only man he hated,
and who on his side had no reason to stand up for
him, nevertheless bears witness in his Correspondence
to his ever-increasing influence. In February 1775
he does not hesitate to say that Voltaire's Don Pedro
shows signs of advancing years-sent la décrépitude ;
but, although he judges Rousseau's system most
severely, he never for a moment casts doubt on the
extent of his talent.
About this time the
Genevan Dumont came to Paris to his friend Mira-
beau, from London. "Except on the stage, Voltaire's
reign is at an end," he wrote to Romilly in England.
"Rousseau rises in proportion as the other sinks.
Posterity will wonder why they were ever considered
rivals."
Oelsner, the German friend and fellow-worker of
Sièyes, says in a letter to a compatriot at the begin-
ning of 1791, and in the midst of the Revolution :-
"Jean Jacques Rousseau is to have a statue as the
author of the Contrat Social, and a pension of 1200
livres is granted to his widow. The worshippers of
this divinity are to make a pilgrimage on the first fine
spring day to Ermenonville. Voltaire's followers
exclaim against all this idolatry, and sigh that their
THE GERMANS. THE ENGLISH.
189
prophet is forgotten; and truly the last part of their
grievance is not groundless." *
In Germany there was hardly a dissentient voice
on the subject.
According to Lessing, J. J. Rousseau was "the
bold philosopher who having no prejudices went
straight to the truth." †
We learn that Kant twice gave up his daily walk
to read Emile.‡
The young Schiller was inspired to write the lines,
"Sokrates ging unter durch sophisten,
Rousseau leidet, Rousseau fällt durch Christen
Rousseau-der aus Christen, Menschen wirbt,"
and he sent his robber Moor away from civilisation
into the woods. Rousseau was the starting-point-
but certainly that only-to another. With Götz in
his hand and Werther in his mind, young Goethe
exclaimed, "Tais-toi, Jean Jacques, ils ne te com-
prendront pas." §
Herder, Jacobi, Klinger, Campe, Heinse, down to
Lenz, testify to the power of Rousseau's ideas over
them, and this may be said of every civilised land in
* Oelsner, formerly councillor of the Prussian legation, Letters from
Paris, 1790-1792, to the Councillor von Halem, 36.
† H. Hettner, Geschichte der franzosischen Literatur in achtzehnten
Jahrhundert, 448, 456.
J. Honegger, Kritische Geschichte der franzosischen Kulturein-
flüsse in den letzen Jahrhunderten, 359.
§ M. Bernays, Der junge Goethe, iii. 53. Goethe an Sophie Laroche.
190
MADAME DE STAËL.
Europe. Everywhere, except perhaps in England,
where political opinions were too wide-awake, and
where intellectual independence was moreover too
firmly established to care much for this mere paper-
felicity.
For if ever there was an anti-English mind and
disposition it was that of Rousseau. His rhetoric,
his universality, and his love of foregone conclusions,
his lack of principle in fixing and representing facts,
his perpetual self-deception and deception of others,
the absence of all the attributes of a gentleman in
him, as well as the want of method in his life, made
it especially difficult for English people to be just
towards him.*
Curiously enough J. J. Rousseau has now become
a text for English politics. Formerly considered one
of the most dangerous enemies of liberty by the
great Liberal party, he is now, a hundred years after
his death, adopted by the rising Radical school.
Their cleverest author, Mr. John Morley, has put
forth an apology for J. J. Rousseau, in which he is
startled by nothing-neither by the consequences of
the Contrat Social nor the horrors of Les Confes-
sions; nor does he withold his admiration for the
Mountain.† He admits all the principal points of
Rousseau's theories so unconditionally that an impor-
tant critic like Karl Hillebrand brings forward what
* K. Hillebrand, Aus und über England. John Morley, Studies in
the Eighteenth Century, 338.
† John Morley, Rousseau, 1873.
MERCIER. ST. PIERRE.
191
is really a terrible excuse for the "noble error" of
his English friend, and shields it under the pretext
of extraordinary simplicity and a want of acquaint-
ance with Continental thought.*
Mercier, on the other hand, the critic, publicist,
delegate in the Convention, who, like many others,
at the eleventh hour repented his share in the work,
might well publish a complete volume in 1791 upon
J. J. Rousseau, considered as one of the first insti-
gators of the Revolution.†
Bernardin de St. Pierre, his enthusiastic follower,
went a step further. He not only denied the Patriarch
of Ferney, but emphatically called him "the evil
genius of the century, which found its good genius
in Rousseau."
It is also noticeable that the first actual apology
for Rousseau proceeded from Barrère, "the Anacreon
of the guillotine." It appeared in 1787.
Napoleon's remark to Stanilaus Girardin is well-
known-that "without Rousseau there would have
been no revolution in France."
Madame de Staël repeats it, as well as his further
remark that he did not regret it, "car j'y ai attrapé
le trône.”‡
* Karl Hillebrand, Aus und über England, 339.
† Sebastien Mercier, Jean Jacques Rousseau considéré comme l'un
des premiers Auteurs de la Revolution. Paris, 1791.
† Jobez, La France sous Louis XV. v. 640. Madame de Staël,
Considérations sur la Révolution Française, partie iv. chap. xxi.
Edition 1838.
192
MADAME DE STAËL.
Finally, Madame de Staël herself, who on entering
the path of literature emphatically placed herself
under Rousseau's banner, seldom spoke of Voltaire,
and then only very casually.
The views of her most intimate friends, as well as
the powerful current of public opinion, influenced her
in his favour as far as her personal feelings were
concerned.
It has repeatedly been mentioned that Madame
Necker did all she could to keep Rousseau's tone of
thought away from her daughter in her youth-not
because she blamed his ideas, but because they had
taken such a powerful hold upon herself. This irre-
proachably virtuous woman writes to Moultou, after
reading part of the Confessions in manuscript, "I
confess that as long as Rousseau gives us Héloïse,
Emile, and all these heavenly and human elements,
I can only regard the author's mode of life as a weak
adjunct, and it appears to me that a veil should be
drawn over the faults of this Father of Virtue." *
And Moultou, the former preacher of the Gospel,
who gave up his position and renounced theology
because he thought he had discovered that the
Apostle Paul and St. Augustine had destroyed the
teaching of Christ, now outstripped his friend's enthu-
siasm. In 1763 he writes to Jean Jacques, who had
sought refuge in the Val de Travers, which was in
Swiss territory, but under Frederic's sceptre, "Oh,
* Madame Necker, Mélanges, i. 147.
BACHAUMONT.
193
my friend, you are great, but I am sufficiently great
to feel the grandeur of your mind."
He
thankfully and calmly took Rousseau's advice and
gave up his priestly appointment," which had become
a disgrace to him," and in 1769 assured him that he
remained "strong in the faith."*
Villemain is of opinion that "Rousseau's writings
were the Bible of their times." It made very little
difference that Grimm, Diderot, St. Lambert, should
have become violent opponents.
They had all paid homage to the thinker before
they quarrelled with the man. Malesherbes, the
royal censor, took care that Emile should be circu-
lated; and, although officially forbidden, it wandered
about from house to house under the seal of that
great deputy. He was not merely an adherent of
Rousseau, but belonged to his sect.†
When Emile and the Contrat Social appeared in
1762 Bachaumont wrote: "Rousseau only says aloud
what every one else is thinking." Raynal, Thomas,
Marmontel, Mably, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, Dupaty
Florian, Bouchier, Mercier, Berquin, were under the
direct influence of Rousseau.
In Lyons the churches were filled to hear a preacher
who took Emile for his text.§
* Berthoud, Rousseau au Val de Travers, 109, 140, 142, 147.
Gaullieur, Etudes sur l'Histoire Littéraire de la Suisse française.
† Saint-Marc-Girardin, J. J. Rousseau, sa Vie et ses Ouvrages, ii. 364.
Bachaumont, Mémoires, 137, quoted from Rocquain, L'Esprit
Révolutionnaire avant la Révolution, 235.
§ Costa de Beauregard, Un Homme d'autrefois, 25.
VOL. I.
194
MADAME DE STAËL.
It is related that Christophe de Beaumont, the
archbishop of Paris, whose pastoral letters against
the book were the cause of one of Rousseau's greatest
successes, never spoke of him in private otherwise
than to praise his disposition, his virtues, his genius,
his voluntary poverty, and his sincerity." *
When Madame de Staël left these distinguished
social and literary circles she found the same view
again in the simpler middle classes, held amongst
others by Coindet, the cashier of the firm of Thelus-
son-Necker. Coindet, whose name in common with that
of many others is so unnecessarily slandered in the
Confessions, remained her true friend until his death
in 1808. He admired Rousseau intellectually, and
was besides this a clever observant man, who had no
reason for flattering the great, as Rousseau charged
him with doing. If Madame de Staël passed from
the men to the women-kind frequenting the Necker
salon she found but one or two who had escaped
Rousseau's influence. Among his friends and pro-
tectors might be counted the Comtesse Boufflers, the
Comtesse d'Egmont, the Maréchale de Luxembourg,
and Madame d'Houdetot, if we merely mention those
who played a part in his life. In this atmosphere
Mademoiselle Necker grew up. Her Letters on
Rousseau without any positive dates show that she
had read him with interest in her early years.
* Berthoud, Rousseau au Val de Travers, 85, note.
† Rousseau, Confessions, “Séjour à l'Hermitage."
Girardin, J. J. Rousseau, sa Vie et ses Ouvrages, ii. 261.
Saint-Marc-
REASONS FOR ROUSSEAU'S INFLUENCE.
195
His fascination took hold of her as it took hold of
the whole generation belonging to the last decade
before the Revolution, and for the same reasons.
These reasons owed their force to the double fact
that his system was at once a novelty and a reaction
for her.
New were his paradoxes in favour of a state of
nature and against civilization and culture in the
treatise of 1750 and 1755, "On the Influence of Pro-
gress in Science and Arts upon Manners," and "On
the Origin of Inequality amongst Men," this mani-
festo against society which none of Rousseau's later
works surpassed in regard to the extent of its revo-
lutionary programme.
New to the modern European world was the teaching
of the Contrat Social, of the incontestable sovereignty
of the people, the proclamation of the unrestricted,
unconditional will of every individual as the only
foundation of the State and of authority. New the
consequent doctrine, not so much of civil equality and
the equal rights of each individual in sight of the law,
as of the right of every one to have a share in the
Government, the sole claim to the existence of which
lies in the ever-changing and contradictory will of the
multitude. New also was the educational system in
Emile, the return to nature which was not to be opposed
or restrained but merely supported and developed.
After the explanation of the rights of men in the
Contrat Social followed the explanation of children's
rights, described by Goethe as the "gospel of educa-
·
o 2
196
MADAME DE STAËL.
tion according to Nature"; an impossible Utopia,
taken as a whole, as every system was that Rousseau
built up, but taken in detail, full of fruitful, although
often contradictory, suggestions and useful truths
like everything originated by his genius.
Every one who has even casually studied Rousseau
knows that these ideas of his, although new to his
readers, are not for the most part original. A hundred
years earlier the Englishman Hobbes had lived through
a revolution, but Rousseau contributed to bring one
about. Hobbes ascribed the political anarchy he so
much disliked to the working of religious influences.
To counteract them both he met the difficulty by
favouring despotism as centered in one man. His
prince is invested with unlimited power over Church
and State, as every subject by virtue of contract has
permanently and freely given up all individual rights
to his direction; and the will of the multitude cannot
err. As this power is only the will of each individual
in the great mass represented by the prince, he need
not be restricted, and the people require no guarantees.
How could a prince ever be tempted to undertake
anything against those whose advantage and interests
he represents and of whose will he is the mouthpiece?
This is the point where the doctrines of The Leviathan
and De Cive come into contact with the theories of
Rousseau.
Uncontrolled princely authority granted by uni-
versal suffrage is just as false and historically im-
possible as Rousseau's teaching concerning the original
ROUSSEAU AND HOBBES.
197
liberty and equality of individuals and their inalienable
rights. Hobbes's system culminates in absolute mo-
narchy-Rousseau overthrows it and sets the sove-
reignty of the people in its place. Both come to the
same result. The last word of the political teaching
and of the philosophy according to natural law, advo-
cated by the adherent of the Stuarts or by the citizen
of Geneva, is in favour of the throne in the one case
and in favour of democracy in the other; but both
destroy the lawful independence of individuals and
the right of the minority, they both ignore historical
development and the true nature of the State; both
end in despotism. Even in Emile, his most enduring
monument and his greatest creation, Rousseau had a
pattern before him, and predecessors to point out the
way. The Essays of Montaigne, the works of Locke,
the political opponent of Hobbes, not only stirred his
soul but excited him to opposition. It is easily under-
stood that the first principles of those intellectual
teachers who up till now had held all but exclusive
sway were likewise pressed into his service.* Grimm,
however, spoke in all good faith when he asked, from
whom Rousseau had stolen his style, his eloquence,
and his word-painting. The real kernel of the ques-
tion was that the most self-evident truths had been
forgotten or laid aside until
breathed new life into them.
not so much because he had a
Rousseau appeared and
He obtained
He obtained supremacy
new message to convey
* Brockerhoff, Jean Jacques Rousseau, his Life and Works, iii. 48
and 155.
198
MADAME DE STAËL.
as because he partly restored knowledge and invested
it with new brilliancy. The secret of his power is to
be attributed less to himself than to the weakness of
his opponents and to the development of the Church,
of the State, and of society since the death of Louis
XIV.
Louis, who did not possess the talent of ruling to
any great extent, thought in part to condone the sins
of his private life by fulfilling his conception of
orthodoxy in persecuting the Calvinists outside and
the Jansenists in the bosom of his own creed. To
the second half of his reign belong many sombre
pictures; none is more tragic than that of the expul-
sion of his own subjects, hungry, cold, and needy,
and the desecration of the graves of those nuns of
Port Royal who had died in the faith, whose bones
were given to the dogs just outside the confines of
Versailles because they held different opinions to
those of the king. Such deeds cannot be excused,
but they can be explained. Not only on the part of
the victims, but on that of their opponents, there
existed strong and sincere convictions.
Courtiers might flatter to gain the favour of the
king in his advancing years. Bossuet, however, and
the theologists of the Gallican Church, were no less
in earnest than Pascal and the Port Royalists. In-
tolerance closely resembles strongly-developed reli-
gious belief, and is always to be deprecated; but it
was all the more despicable that persecution should
THE BULL UNIGENITUS.
199
continue to exist after convictions had been shaken
and when they had ceased to be deeply-rooted.
"The court exhales hypocrisy," says Saint Simon
in the latter years of the old king's reign. The
regent, proud of his infidelity, no longer demanded
this tribute, but quietly allowed men's belief to be
forced, although he himself so greatly despised all
religion as to desire the Roman purple for a Dubois;
and this in no small degree assists us to understand
Voltaire.* Fleury did no less harm, although in
another way. He placed the teaching of the Church
at the disposal of the crown, and forced the Roman
see to take all manner of unworthy steps.
The struggle between the ultramontane views of
the Government and the Jansenist views of the
members of Parliament and their followers fills the first
half of the later histories of the eighteenth century.
The Jansenist views were dominant in Paris when
the Bull Unigenitus was forced upon France. It
demanded submission from the conscience even with-
out conviction. In 1731 one of the greatest speakers
in the Parisian Parliament, the Abbé Pucelle, speaks
in the following terms of the working of the bull:
"Since this bull has come into operation in France
we are surrounded by mischief. All the sources of
good are stopped, all the schools are poisoned. What
has become of the Sorbonne, whence at one stroke
a hundred of the most learned and loyal professors
* Voltaire, Lettres Anglaises, Euvres, xxvi. 29. Quoted in
Buckle's History of Civilisation in England, i. 692 note.
200
MADAME DE STAËL.
have been ejected? What has become of the cele-
brated school of Sainte-Barbe, which educated such
excellent servants for Church and State? Are not all
our national customs, all our established institutions,
changed and upset?" *
The Catholic Church in France never recovered
from the purifying process undertaken by Cardinal
Fleury. It is true that by far the greater portion of
the nation lived and died moderate in its creed,
otherwise the existing order of things would have
ceased even then. But the power of religious ideas
over the intellect and education of the day was lost.
Their strength was exhausted in the long party strife.
Banished theologians, professors dismissed from their
chair, suspended priests, were to be found in every
town in France. Even nuns were forced to wander
roofless for conscience'-sake, and good Catholics to
die without the last sacraments.
A noteworthy instance of this occurred, amongst
many others, when the Emperor Joseph visited Paris
in 1778.
The emperor expressed a wish to make the acquaint-
ance of the Abbé de l'Epée, the benefactor of the
deaf and dumb, who not only enabled these unfor-
tunate beings to communicate by signs with their
fellow-creatures, but also spent his whole fortune to the
utmost farthing on their behalf. Neither Louis XVI.
nor his sister could gratify the emperor's request. They
* Abbé Pucelle, Les Parlementaires Jansénistes du xviii siècle.
Revue des Deux Mondes, 1881.
RELIGION ALLIED TO POLITICAL OPPOSITION. 201
had never even heard of this excellent priest, for he
had been suspended in consequence of his Jansenist
views in the reign of Louis XV.* The whole literature
of the day testifies to what was suffered, and shows
how the leaders of the French Church had verified
the saying, "Desertum faciunt pacem appellant."
Christianity survives crises such as these, but the
state is shattered. Injured convictions fled to the
shelter of parliamentary freedom. In rising against
the misuse of ecclesiastical authority, a disciplined
opposition formed itself against the extension of royal
prerogative.
As monarchical absolutism had joined itself to the
highest authorities in the Church, the reaction now
followed on political grounds against what was con-
sidered unfair pressure in religious matters.
The first newspaper published by the opposition in
France was the Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, and was
read by every one because it was prohibited.
But oppressors and oppressed alike worked into the
hands of a common foe.
"Jansenists and Jesuits tear each other," wrote
Voltaire in 1762; "the one must be destroyed by
means of the other and the collected fragments must
serve as a footstool for the truth." The truth?
What indeed did Voltaire and his contemporaries
call the truth? He himself considered it to be
secured by a dreadful disturbance, a struggle against
* Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI, i. 233.
† Rocquain, L'Esprit Révolutionnaire avant la Révolution, 236.
202
MADAME DE STAËL.
all positive religion, an epicurean Deism, the best
side of which is an optimist humane tone of mind,
and is typified in these words: "Let things be
good or bad; let be it our care to make everything
better."
His share in the Revolution was not sympathy for
the people, for whom he neither had much respect nor
sympathy; it consisted far more in the fact that he
changed the views of the reigning powers. His blind
fanaticism against Christianity, which his marvellous
intellect makes still more inexcusable, was not the
way to such reform; he gave the lie to his doctrine
of toleration. When the "System of Nature," this
"Code of Atheism," appeared, Voltaire tried too late
to counteract the spirits he had evoked.
Holbach's work, which considers every religious
impulse to be an hallucination, was only the most
complete of a long list of similar works.*
After a
while Rousseau appeared on the scene, bringing a
reaction which could only be possible or understood
by the light of what had gone before. His first
declaration of war is levelled at the preponderance
and over-estimation of the intellect.
“The thinking
man is an animal spoilt." "Come into the woods and
become men." The appeal to Nature," Remonter
à l'état de la nature," as Rousseau expresses it in
Emile; the theory that Nature made man happy
* Barante, Tableau de la Littérature Française au xviii siècle, 94.
† J. J. Rousseau, Discours: Le rétablissement des arts et des sciences
a-t-il contribué à épurer ou a corrompre les mœurs ?
Barni, Etudes sur le xviii siècle. J. J. Rousseau, ii. 213.
REACTION AGAINST INTELLECT.
203
and good, society had made him depraved and
wretched,* may be traced like a red thread through
all his writings. Upon this follows the postulate
that education be carried out according to the direc-
tion and development of nature; that society return
to its original conditions, or rather to what Rousseau
considers them to have been; that property be divided
according to the more natural rights; † that religion
be founded on feeling, to the exclusion of all dogma
and in indifference to all forms of worship; making
Christianity itself nothing else than "the more
enlightened natural religion."‡
Among the spiritual followers of Rousseau were
two celebrated women: Madame Roland and Madame
de Staël. They are reciprocally necessary to each
other. Neither can be fully understood without
taking Rousseau into account, and, on the other hand,
they complete our idea of Rousseau's intellect.
Madame Roland, the elder of the two, comes first.
in reference to this. Born on the 18th March, 1754,
Marie Jeanne Phlipon was, like Rousseau, the child
of simple middle-class people. Her father was an
engraver. Her solitary childhood and blameless
dreamy youth were spent more amongst books than
* Rousseau, beginning of Emile. Rousseau, Juge de Jean Jacques.
3 Dialogue.
† Rousseau, Discours sur l'Economie Politique. Barni, loc. cit. on
the subject, ii. 236.
‡ Berthoud, Rousseau au Val de Travers. Rousseau a J. Jequiers,
Motiers, Decembre, 1762, 135.
204
MADAME DE STAËL.
amongst men, in her parents' quiet home and near her
father's work-room.
Amongst her books Plutarch was one of her favour-
ites; "this poetical rather than historical source,
writes one of her biographers, "whence it is well
known that Rousseau borrowed his images from the
republican characters of olden days and his brilliant
pictures of ancient republics, and whence he con-
ceived an idea of conditions of government which
never existed and never could exist, but which would
all the more delight a woman's mind."*
And Rousseau himself? "I read him very late,"
she says in her Memoirs, "and perhaps it was as
well; he would have driven me crazy; I should
never have wished to read any other books; and
as things turn out he might only have intensified my
weak points." †
Dauban, another of her biographers, dates her
knowledge of Rousseau's works from the year 1777,
when she was 23 years old. She says herself that
her education, her first impressions, her intercourse
with the world, all contributed to imbue her with a
republican perception of the absurdity or injustice
of a crowd of social differences and distinctions.§
To this intercourse with the world belongs a visit
in 1771 to a relation at Versailles, who was a wait-
* F. C. Schlosser, Madame von Staël and Madame Roland.
† Madame Roland, Mémoires, Edition Dauban, 101.
C. A. Dauban, Étude sur Madame Roland. Introduction, liv.
§ Madame Roland, Mémoires, Edition Dauban, 92.
MADAME ROLAND.
205
ing-woman to Marie Antoinette, then dauphiness.
Mademoiselle Phlipon spent a week in an attic in the
royal palace and watched the doings there with a
mixture of philosophy, fancy, sentiment, and judg-
ment, which, as she remarks, had been alike cultivated
in her, but which did not prevent her liking to see
the great display. Only she was annoyed that such
personally insignificant and otherwise contemptible
men should reap the benefit of it all, and when her
mother asked her what impression her stay had made
upon her she replied, that if she had stayed a few
days longer she would have hated the people to such
a degree that she would not have known how to
contain her hatred. "But what did they do to you?"
asked her mother again. "They let me feel injustice
and see absurdity." It filled her with astonishment
and indignant contempt to see this simple crowd greet-
ing their self-created idol with acclamation on state
occasions.* Her youth was otherwise uneventful.
In 1780, at the age of six-and-twenty, she married
Roland de la Platière, aged forty-six, and at that time
inspector of the Lyons manufactories. An only child,
a daughter, was born of this union.
In the year
1780 Roland took his wife to England for a short
time, where he had business, and then to Paris, to
which town he repaired that he might put in a claim
for elevation to the rank of nobility, in which fruit-
less attempts he was supported by his wife. Other-
wise the couple lived in the country in the neighbour-
hood of Lyons. The husband wrote treatises and
Idem, Introduction, xxxix. and pp. 75 and 93.
206
MADAME DE STAËL.
learned disquisitions, amongst others one in 1787
proposing that oil and phosphorus should be extracted
from human remains for the benefit of farming.
In imitation of the ancient Egyptians, he proposed
in 1788 that the Villefranche Academy should organ-
ize a tribunal for judging the dead.*
Meanwhile Madame Roland busied herself with her
household, hospitably received her husband's friends
(who respectfully admired the enthusiastic and beau-
tiful woman), and looked after her husband and
child, regarding matrimony as an institution which
"confides the happiness of two human beings to a
woman." +
During which her imagination worked on, restless!
and this imagination was filled and dominated by
Rousseau. How could this have been otherwise?
She had nothing to set in his place, no knowledge of
men and the world, no experience, nothing to compen-
sate in her affections. Like a true woman she took
him by the letter, and endeavoured with one great
exception to realise his theories. This exception was
to be found in the purity of her nature, which kept
her from any false step although perhaps not from
experiments. There was one dangerous moment in
the life of the Queen Marie Antoinette, namely, when
she spoke of Louis XVI. as la pauvre homme.‡ There
* Baron de Girardot, Roland et Madame Roland, i. 83, 185, quoted
by Taine, Les Origines de la France contemporaine. La Révolution,
ii. 109.
† Dauban, Mémoires de Madame Roland. Introduction.
† Arneth, Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette. Correspondance,
MADAME ROLAND.
207
came a moment when Madame Roland called her dull,
pedantic husband le malheureux Roland, and this in
a letter to Buzot, whom she loved.* Fate was merciful
and the infidelity was only ideal.
Her farewell to the man she loved, beginning, "Oh,
thou whose name I may not utter,"† is to be compared
with all that is most beautiful in prose, and not merely
that of Rousseau. In it she extols the prison-walls
which guard her affections, and certainly greets death
as the only way out of an unbearable dilemma.‡ But
in other respects Madame Roland only gave herself
up
all the more willingly to Rousseau.
Her style, as Saint-Beuve rightly remarks, is by
no means original; when true passion takes hold of
her, in the highest exaltation, and with the prospect
of death before her, she rises to real eloquence. But
under ordinary conditions her letters and reminis-
cences are full of affected, laboured, and inelegant
sentences, and leave no doubt that they are imitations,
and not the natural result of her own impulse. We
know the original. Rousseau's over-weening self-
esteem almost leads to the threshold of madness-he
expects altars to be dedicated to him. Madame
Roland is not more modest. "There is only one
Marie Antoinette to Graf Rosenberg, 1775. Geffroy et Arneth, Cor-
respondance Secrète entre Marie Antoinette et Mercy, ii. 359. July,
1775.
* Sainte-Beuve, Nouveaux Lundis, vii. 248.
† Madame Roland, Mémoires, Dernières Pensées, 390.
‡ Dauban, Étude sur Madame Roland, 39. The wonderful, last
letter to Buzot. July 7, 1793.
208
MADAME DE STAËL.
position in the world that would suit me," she says,
"it is that of Providence." She not only describes
herself as intellectual, she further describes herself
physically; and as she has nothing dishonourable,
none of the defects of her master to relate of herself,
she falls back on an episode that is quite outside the
matter, and writes an inexcusable page to lower her-
self to him.
The hatred of all tradition and a corresponding
disinclination for all history is another feature in
Rousseau, and is shared by Sièyes and Condorcet
and many of the revolutionary party. "Thoroughly
unhistorical" he is termed by one of his best Ger-
man biographers.
The great historian Hume could not resist saying,
"He has read very little during the course of his life,
and (in 1764) has now totally renounced all reading;
he has seen very little, and has no curiosity to see or
remark; he has reflected, properly speaking, and
studied very little; and has not, indeed, much know-
ledge; he has only felt during the whole course of his
life." +
And Rousseau himself feeling his deficiency gives
the word to Hume: "I still dread that my writings
are good for nothing at bottom, and that all my
theories are full of extravagance. The perusal of
* Hettner, Geschichte der franzosischen literatur im achtzehnten
Jahrhundert, 3 auflage, 441.
† Hume, quoted by Sainte-Beuve, Causeries de Lundi, ii. 78.
Sainte-Beuve, Causeries de Lundi, ii. 79. Rousseau to Hume,
1766.
MADAME ROLAND.
209
novels gave me romantic, quaint conceptions of real
life, and no substantial experience or reflection freed
me from these."
Madame Roland knew as little of these thoughts as
of the historical past of her own or any other country,
with the exception of a few ordinary conceptions and
broad effects borrowed from Athens or Sparta.
Knowledge is necessary to a correct comprehension
of the past, although sound judgment is generally all
that is needed when recent events are in question.
But what was Madame Roland's conception of the
history of the times?
After going through many vicissitudes and struggles
in common with her people with whom she always
maintained motherly relations, the Empress Maria
Theresa had gone to the grave, honoured in her pri-
vate relations and beloved by the nation as well as
by all Europe, Frederick alone excepted. No differ-
ence of opinion appeared possible on the point until
Madame Roland advanced hers.
Speaking of the Queen Marie Antoinette in her
Memoirs, she says that "Frivolity, the confidence of
power and of youth, the Austrian insolence and illusions
of the senses, first led her astray, and the king after
her." She adds, "Marie Antoinette was herself led
astray by all the vices of an Asiatic court, and her
mother's example made this only too easy." *
This explains how Mallet du Pan, who knew her,
could say of Madame Roland that she was quite in-
* Madame Roland, Mémoires, Edition Dauban, 350.
VOL. I.
Р
210
MADAME DE STAËL.
capable of describing the scenes of horror which she
did not hesitate to instigate.* In this condition the
Revolution found her and to her who thought the
most enthusiastic too lukewarm, the most excitable
too moderate, it brought bitter disappointment even
in its dawn.
On the 26th of July, 1789, she wrote to her friend
Bosc, the future editor of her Memoirs :-" You busy
yourselves with forming a municipality and you
shield the heads who continue to mischief. You
are mere children, your enthusiasm is a short-lived
flame, and if the National Assembly does not arraign
two illustrious personages, or fails to find a nobly
inclined Decius to cut them off you will all be
.Ӡ
Thus runs the invitation to regicide, the bloody
shadow of which falls even on the scaffold prepared
for Madame Roland. From that time forward she
fires the courage of her friends and contemporaries,
Lanthenas and Bancal des Issarts, of Brissot and
Camille Desmoulins. In September 1791 she preaches
"Insurrection, this holiest of duties if the Fatherland
be in danger." She appeals in Paris against the luke-
warmness of the inactive provinces: "even a father
should not be deterred by any feeling of mercy when
the public good is in question." ‡
These contributions to the free-republican Courier
*Mallet du Pan, Mercure Britannique, 10 Dec. 1798, 533.
† Madame Roland, Correspondance. Printed with the Memoirs.
‡ Madame Roland, Correspondance. Lettres du 20 Decembre, 1790,
et 24 Janvier, 1791.
HER POLITICS DECIDED BY ROUSSEAU.
211
de Lyon, edited by Champagneux, a friend of Roland's,
prepared her for the political role she was to fill.
This began with her arrival in Paris on the 20th
February, 1791, made her the life and soul of the
Gironde, and came to a tragic conclusion November
8th, 1793.
To what extent is J. J. Rousseau even responsible
for this short but decisive period of her life? He
himself was a man of impulse, and had very lucid
intervals.
The whole creed of the radical demagogue, even
to definite communism, can be adduced from his
writings: * but, on the other hand, each separate
article of this creed can be set aside by a contra-
dictory assertion of Rousseau's own.
The Contrat Social sets up to teach the funda-
mental liberty and equality of every individual,
and declares this liberty to be eternal and unchange-
able. The state, in his judgment, is nothing more
than the expression of the general choice, and at any
moment its borrowed power may be limited, altered,
or taken away. At the same time the Contrat Social
exacts as an unavoidable condition on the part of
each individual that it shall possess a complete con-
trol over all his rights in favour of the state, or of
that unity represented by the state.
On these grounds the state is omnipotent and must
settle everything that it considers necessary to the
* H. Hettner, Geschichte der franzosische literatur im achtzehnten
Jahrhundert 483.
P 2
212
MADAME DE STAËL.
general good, even to the foundations of religion,*
upon which the Contrat Social ends with the noto-
rious sentence: "If any one, after solemnly receiving
the dogmas of this religion, behaves as if he did not
believe in them, he is to be punished with death."
In other words, the abstract unconditional offer of
freedom for the individual leads to his absorption in
the state: absolute democracy resolves itself into un-
controlled despotism!
In this same Contrat Social Rousseau in vain ex-
plains "that even the most successful revolution
would be too dearly bought with the blood of a single
citizen; † in vain does he declare that the constitu-
tion he had thought out was not for society as it now
exists, but for an ideal republic of about ten thousand
men; in vain did he consult the Poles, not so much
to verify his system as to remove the ban on liberty
and to choose a king from the national aristocracy.
The question is not how he wished to be under-
stood, but how he has been understood. The real
interpreter of the Contrat Social in this instance was
not J. J. Rousseau, who devised the work, but Maxi-
milian Robespierre, who executed it.
The way to the Mountain led through the midst
of the Gironde, and Madame Roland had given her-
* J. J. Rousseau, Le Contrat Social. Barni, La Philosophie du
dix-huitième siècle, ii. 207, 222, 227. Lanfrey, Essai sur la Révolution
Française, 62-63.
† De l'Économie politique, quoted by Barni. J. J. Rousseau in the
Philosophie du dix-huitième siècle, ii. 323.
ITS INTERPRETATION BY MADAME ROLAND. 213
self heart and soul to the Gironde. She wished to
upset the present state of things because they not
only offended her sense of justice but they had
offended her vanity. Social conditions in which she
had no place must be destroyed,* to be replaced by
an ideal republic-the chimera of her solitary dreams.
Rousseau might reflect when he had reached the
threshold of the truth, but Madame Roland remained
unmoved.
The turning-point was the king's flight, the return
from Varennes. "To bring Louis XVI. back to the
throne," writes Madame Roland to her friends, "is
mad, even abominable. The best and wisest course
would be to put him on his trial. But you are in-
capable of doing this. Therefore you should suspend
his powers." †
This was written on the 24th of June, 1791. Even
after Mirabeau's death in April she longs for civil
war, the most fearful of all calamities, as the great
school for public virtue. Eight months later Roland
was minister. He proved himself as incapable as he
was honourable. Brought into contact with the king,
he was on the point of showing him mercy and
Here
proving that he also was an honourable man.
Madame Roland interferes with the remark that
"Louis has been nurtured in all the prejudices of
* See Fontanes on this subject. Sainte-Beuve, Nouvelles Causeries
de Lundi, viii. 190.
† C. A. Dauban, Étude sur Madame Roland, Notice biographique, 6.
:
214
MADAME DE STAËL.
despotism and in the pursuit of pleasure, and there-
fore cannot love the constitution.” *
It was certainly difficult for him to love the con-
stitution, as it was the noose that strangled him.
His last attempt to save himself was the dismissal
of the Girondin ministers who imposed the perse-
cution of the non-jurors upon him. Madame Roland
and her friends retorted by an open accusation of the
king, by the invasion of the Tuileries on the 20th
June, 1792, by setting up the Paris Commune, by a
plan for federation of the departments, and by their
last sin-laden victory, the overthrow of the throne on
the 10th of August.
In vain did the instigator of the murder of the
Swiss guards protest against the slaughter three weeks
later in September. From that moment Danton
ruled, and the duel between Madame Roland and
Robespierre began. The latter, more consequent
than she, included wholesale murder in his logic, and
sent his former ally to the scaffold.
"I knew not," writes the unhappy heroine of the
Gironde, speaking of the ancien régime, "that
there could exist a still more dreadful form of govern-
ment, a more horrible system of corruption. Indeed
who could have supposed such a thing? All the
philosophers have been mistaken as well as I."† Not
all; but certainly he of whose work Benjamin Con-
stant writes that he knows of "no system of servitude
* Madame Roland, Mémoires, Edition Dauban, 350.
† Idem.
MADAME DE STAËL'S LETTERS UPON ROUSSEAU. 215
which has sanctioned more pernicious error than the
aimless metaphysics of the Contrat Social.” *
And now to Madame de Staël and her Letters upon
Rousseau. When they appeared in 1788 she had,
as she herself says, "as yet no notion of what con-
stituted a government." She had however none of
†
the misconceptions of Madame Roland and so many
others, for she had grown up in an official atmosphere,
and was perfectly aware that people did not build
houses over powder-mines. The few allusions she
makes to the subject of Rousseau's political ideas
leave no doubt that in this essential point she is not
in accordance with the object of her admiration.
"He wished," she writes, "to lead mankind back to
social conditions of which the fables of the Golden
Age can alone give any idea. Such a project is of
course a mere flight of imagination. But in their
search for the philosopher's stone the alchemists
made many useful discoveries." "I venture," she
continues, "to reproach Rousseau for refusing to
consider that a nation governed by its own repre-
sentatives is free, and for insisting on a general
assembly of every individual. Enthusiasm is all very
well in sentiment, but it is out of place in practical
schemes. The defenders of liberty should beware of
exaggeration. Montesquieu is more useful to society
* Benjamin Constant, Cours de Politique Constitutionelle, i. 329.
† D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 191.
† Madame de Staël, Euvres complètes, i. Lettres sur Rousseau;
Lettre i. Du style de Rousseau.
216
MADAME DE STAËL.
as it now exists; Rousseau would be more useful to
those combining together for the first time: most of
the truths he developes are speculative . . . . . but
perhaps we must ourselves have governed in order to
relinquish an ideal prosperity, and to take the bad
and the good together." *
Madame de Staël's opinion of him is in accordance
with that of her father, who in 1775 had spoken
against the longing for a return to a primitive state
of existence, as even then, men had to put restraint
on their desires and had to employ force to keep what
they had earned by their skill.†
Her approval of Emile was equally conditional.
There could be no objection, she says, to his system
of physical education and training, and his eloquence
had restored motherly feeling in a certain class of
society. He caused mothers to realize this happiness
and this duty. He even reinstated childhood in its
kingdom, and it is quite right that his portraits
represent him crowned by children; but to the
question whether she would bring up a child on
Rousseau's system she replies in the negative.
For," she says,
mere vanity would lead me to
choose a settled calling for the young man to enable
him to make his way in the world." $
દ
66
That is precisely what Emile could not do, and
* Idem, Lettre iv. Les Idées Politiques de Rousseau.
† Necker, Euvres complètes, i. Sur le Commerce des Grains, 13.
Madame de Staël, Euvres complètes, i. Lettres sur Rousseau:
Lettre iii. Emile.
HER POLITICAL OPINIONS.
217
thus Rousseau's system of education is relegated in
the most polite manner possible to the region of
chimera, to which Madame de Staël had already con-
signed the Contrat Social.
This kind of free and independent judgment betrays
an astonishing capacity for political questions. Had
Rousseau been satisfied to suggest theories of natural
rights he would have made very little impression upon
Madame de Staël. But she soon found Rousseau's
republican ideas more approachable under the double
influence of events and personal inclinations. It is
the task of this biography to mention that Madame
de Staël was not prevented by her admiration for her
father from deserting his political standpoint during
many years, and that her opinions influenced him
later on, to so great an extent that even in 1802, in
his will, he pledged the authority of his name in
favour of a republican form of government as the
only possible form for France, although personally
he retained his preference for a constitutional mon-
archy.*
A taste of despotism was needed to bring the great
constitutional theories to perfection which are in-
separably connected with her name as authoress of
Les Considérations.
But we have only reached 1788. She is two-and-
twenty, and her passionate nature dominates her
intellect. The former accepts teaching that the
* Necker, Euvres complètes, xi. Dernières Vues de Politique et de
Finance, 222, 226, 240.
218
MADAME DE STAËL.
latter would repudiate. The opening words of her
Letters upon Rousseau-" We must be moderate if we
wish to convince . . . I will try to write impartially
of La Nouvelle Héloïse as if Time had already robbed
me of the enthusiasm of youth"-at once prove that
she feels herself to be prejudiced in his favour. In
her opinion La Nouvelle Héloïse is a great moral
idea dramatised and put into practice. The aim of
the author is to lead to repentance. She acknowledges
that his chosen object is by no means moral. "I could
wish," she writes, "that the author had described
Julie as the victim of her kind heart.
seems to me that indulgence for certain shortcomings
is the only virtue which it is dangerous to preach,
although it is so useful to practise it.
It further
"The real use of a novel is to be sought in its effect
much more than in its plot. If, as it were, men
must be driven to be virtuous, if, by reason of their
imperfections, all the eloquence of a great passion
must be employed to interest them-can Rousseau be
blamed for having chosen love as his medium ? Per-
haps in the first days men knew no other virtue than
that which sprang from similar feelings. Love can
sometimes call forth all the qualities that religion and
morality prescribe. We are virtuous when we love
that which deserves to be loved. We then involun-
tarily fulfil all that our duty requires of us. Once
we have given up all selfish aims it is impossible to
turn back, and piety takes the place of love. This is
the truest definition of our heart."
ON THE "NOUVELLE HÉLOÏSE."
219
She goes on to say that she knew that people blamed
Rousseau for describing a tutor who had seduced the
pupil confided to him, but she owns that this hardly
occurred to her when she read it, as it was evidently
borrowed from the Héloïse of olden times. A romance
of this kind might lead a man like Saint Preux astray,
but Saint Preux was entirely imbued with the notions
of equality which may still be found in Switzerland.
No, the example of Saint Preux was not immoral,
although Julie's might be, or might have been if her
remorse and her subsequent conduct had not condoned
her fault. Madame de Staël further excuses Julie's
silence towards Wolmar, but she adds, "how much
she would have appreciated the impulse that might
have led her to confess everything to him."
She rightly feels that the only admissible excuse
for Julie d'Etanges was to be found-not in the
reflections and sermons Rousseau puts into her
mouth, but in the irresistible force of her overmaster-
ing passion. "If the charm of virtue is renounced,
all those qualities must at least be retained which
have brought about such renunciation. Rousseau was
mistaken in thinking that Julie would gain by seem-
ing less passionate.'
""*
And now to the crucial test of the Confessions
published in the years immediately preceding the
Revolution, but not completed when she wrote:
"This book is not written in the noble strain one
* Madame de Staël, Euvres complètes, i. Lettres sur Rousseau :
Lettre ii. La Nouvelle Héloïse.
220
MADAME DE STAËL.
•
might expect of a man telling his own history. But
Rousseau had a sentiment of pride that guaranteed
his sincerity. He considered himself to be the best
of men. He would have blushed to conceal a single
fault in describing himself to others. I imagine
that he wrote his memoirs far more with the desire
to shine as an historian than as a hero .. Rousseau
was not out of his mind, but one of his attributes,
that of imagination, had exceeded all bounds. His
intellectual superiority came very near madness. He
was born to enjoy nature but not society. He was
like an Indian on the shores of the Orinoco, who
would be content to sit all day on the banks and
watch the water flowing past.
"We can scarcely say that Rousseau was virtuous,
as a man's actions and their results must justify such
commendation.
"His proud disposition did not alienate me from
Rousseau. I drew the conclusion that he knew him-
self to be good. He was perhaps the only man who
was base at intervals; as a rule it is a fault that
becomes more and more habitual.
His faults
were follies. His writings breathe the noblest, most
virtuous thoughts."
And now to Les Charmettes and Madame de
Warens. "Rousseau thought less of her than of his
love, which required some object.
He was
naturally good, sensitive, and confiding. It may be
remembered how much he cared for his fellow-crea-
tures when he was young. If later on he altered in
MADAME DE STAËL ON ROUSSEAU'S SUICIDE. 221
justifies it.
this respect it was because he was, less than other
people, prepared for disappointment. Madame de
Staël is the first who puts the report of Rousseau's
suicide into words; the letter in which he condemns
suicide is much less important than that in which he
She adds that perhaps he feared to
deprive himself of this means of escape.* This sup-
position, which made no small commotion amongst
those connected with Jean Jacques, led to a con-
troversy between Madame de Staël and Madame de
Vassy, the daughter of that Monsieur de Girardin in
whose summer residence at Ermenonville it is well
known that Rousseau died. The question is unde-
cided to this day, although mostly answered in the
negative. Madame de Staël's criticism of Rousseau
would be incomplete if she did not mention the
"creed" of the Savoyard vicar. She calls it a
master-piece of eloquence in the matter of sentiment,
and of metaphysics in argumentation. She writes:
"Rousseau is the only genius of his time who main-
tains his respect for the pious beliefs we so much
require. He consults natural instinct, and then lends all
* Madame de Staël, Lettres sur Rousseau: Lettre i. Caractère de
Jean Jacques.
† Madame de Charrière, Lettres, Mémoires. Revue Suisse, 1857.
793.
‡ Brockerhof and Barni amongst his later biographers doubt his
suicide. Bougeault, L'État moral de Jean Jacques, 1883, is against
it, as likewise Corancez, a contemporary of Rousseau, and in this
century Saint-Marc-Girardin. L. Blanc and Sainte-Beuve, Chateau-
briand et son Groupe Littéraire, i. 107.
222
MADAME DE STAËL.
the power of his superior mind to testify to the truth
of this instinct.* Combining warmth and moderation,
Rousseau has the undying merit of influencing the
conscience and of soaring to eloquence by the force
of passion. He believes in love, therefore he may
be forgiven."† Sixteen years later, in 1814, in a
second preface to these Letters, Madame de Staël tells
us that their circulation, which had not been desired
by her, had decided her literary vocation. "I do
not regret the circumstances," she ends by saying,
as this calling has given me more pleasure than
pain. Everything in woman's destiny points to de-
cline, except thought, which by its nature tends ever
upwards. Intellectual pleasures help to calm a tem-
pestuous nature."
66
On the occasion of her first real connection with
the public Madame de Staël found herself in harmony
with public opinion. She received ample recognition,
and this success never deserted her. Grimm, although
he had written a bitter satire on the Confessions not
long before, confirms this fact, and calls her Letters
"un charmant ouvrage." t
And now we must put the question whether
Rousseau's influence on thought left any lasting trace
in the life of Madame de Staël. Most certainly it did.
The characteristic traits of his political system
were brought into prominence. Even his system of
* Madame de Staël, Lettres sur Rousseau. Lettre iii. Emile.
† Idem: Lettre i. Style de Rousseau.
Grimm, Correspondance Littéraire, xiii. 243, and xiv. 472.
ROUSSEAU'S MORALITY. WITNESSES TO IT. 223
morals had its peculiar stamp. More than any pre-
vious moralist, he confused the hitherto-undisputed
theories of right and wrong by his seductive rhetoric.
All who would not lower themselves to base so-
phistries agree in this. "The Nouvelle Héloïse,"
writes Madame Necker, "is a monument erected to
virtue on the foundations of vice."
To confound former sinfulness with enthusiasm in
the cause of righteousness means spiritual chaos and
a loss of the capacity for ever disentangling them.
This is the danger of the book,* and Mallet du Pan
is of the same opinion. He says in his decided way,
going straight to the point, "Rousseau tempted even
honour." Villemain says,
†
"His morality was an
appeal to passion against duty." Bersot speaks of
his moral teaching as of a sample of his heart,
"searching his feelings for a rule of conduct, and
only considering himself bound by duty when these
feelings are interested." § Nisard accuses him of
professing what he did not practise.||
Those who think such comments too severe should
remember the spiritual offspring of Rousseau,
Werther, Delphine, and a few of the favourite
* Madame Necker, Mélanges, i. 30, and iii. 67.
† Mallet du Pan, Mercure Britannique, ii. 342, Du degré d'influence
qu'a eu la Philosophie sur la Révolution.
‡ Villemain, Tableau de la Littérature Française au dix-huitième
siècle, iii. 442.
§ Saint-Marc-Girardin, J. J. Rousseau, sa Vie, ses Euvres. Preface
de Bersot.
|| Nisard, De la Littérature Française, iv. 489.
224
MADAME DE STAËL.
creations of George Sand, who terminate an unsuc-
cessful existence in suicide because they all believe
in the doctrine that passion justifies everything, and
in the original perfection of human nature.
"There
is not much good in men," said the dying Kant.
Homo homine non Deus, sed diabolus.
"Let every
one search his own conscience.”* "I know not how
the life of a worthless man is ordered," says Joseph de
Maistre. "I never was one. I know however that
the life of a respectable man is distracting enough."
Rousseau and all his followers hold that "man is
good, and that the only constraint laid on his instincts
is ordained for his own happiness."
What is this otherwise than antagonism to Chris-
tianity? The whole basis of a Christian conception of
this world is destroyed by it, and with it all the
defensive weapons it has provided for weak human
nature. Madame de Staël herself was to experience
this. Not only on the outward circumstances of her
life, but in her inner development, she had to live
through the Revolution before she obtained freedom
by submission to law.
* Hasse, Letzte Ausserungen Kant's. Von einem Tischgenossen.
Königsberg, 1804.
CHAPTER V.
Calonne-Necker's Book upon Financial Administration-His Banish-
ment-Loménie de Brienne-May Edicts-Dauphiné-Necker
becomes Minister, Aug. 24, 1788-Victualling of France during
the winter of 1788-1789-Famine and Anarchy-The French
seek a Constitution-Notables again summoned by Necker-
Double representation of the Tiers-Mirabeau-Sièyes-Barnave
The Elections of 1789.
BETWEEN Necker's first resignation, on the 19th May,
1781, and his return to office in August, 1787, four dif-
ferent personages succeeded each other in the financial
administration, and practically in most of the home
administration, as the former included public works,
trade, and a great part of the responsibility of Govern-
ment.* These were Joly de Fleury, d'Ormesson,
Calonne, and Loménie de Brienne.
Joly de Fleury was chosen by Maurepas because he
was of a reactionary turn of mind, insignificant in
character, and agreeable to the Parlement.
His short administration is marked by one of the
most mischievous measures of the reign of Louis XVI.
the edict promulgated three days after Necker's re-
tirement on the 22nd May, 1781, debarring not only
* Chérest, La chute de l'Ancien Régime, i. 30.
VOL. I.
Q
226
MADAME DE STAËL.
the middle classes from serving as officers in the army,
but even the sons of the nobility if unable to trace
back their descent for four generations.
Madame Campan rightly alludes to the "despair"
occasioned by this edict. It divided the army into
two camps, and in the words of a German historian
it fostered Catilines who had nothing to lose by a
revolution.*
To infer from this measure that the whole of the
nobility united in favour of reaction and the main-
tenance of former conditions would be to come to
one of those misleading conclusions frequently drawn
from isolated facts in revolutionary development, and
generally to be disproved by their own evidence
when taken in connection with each other. It was
not the aristocracy, as such, who obtained this
Pyrrhic victory, but the courtiers and a part of the
lesser nobility, who needed class privileges to prevent
their sinking back into the masses.
From copious contemporaneous evidence, such as
the letters and notes of the elder Marquis de Mirabeau,
we gather the amount of hatred and contempt cherished
by the independent nobility living on its own pro-
perty towards the courtiers at Versailles and their
attendant camp of intriguers, who sapped the nation
for their support and for the gratification of their
boundless avarice.
The old families who had been robbed of their
privileges, and yet felt themselves strong enough to
do without the support of the court, now showed them-
*Oncken, Das Zeitalter der Revolution, i. 34-35.
CALONNE.
227
selves most eager for reform, giving an impetus to
agitation and furnishing leaders to the Tiers État.
The alliance was both natural and essential. In
one point at least the interests of the nobility were
identical with those of the Tiers. The latter strove to
attain political power, the former desired to recover
it in the new order of things, as well as a position
similar to that of the English aristocracy, even were
great and material sacrifices to be necessary.
The position of the clergy was entirely different.
According to a saying of Heinrich von Sybel,
there never was a revolution that did not originate
in religious or social causes: in this case both of these
influenced the sixty thousand members of the French
clerical body.
We have already alluded to their reasons for de-
manding a reform in religious matters during the
second half of the eighteenth century.* But the
social question also concerned them.
Whilst the high dignitaries of the Church (number-
ing about 2,800 persons, according to Taine) disposed
of incomes derived from the rich convents and mo-
nasteries, in some cases amounting to 400,000 livres
or a million, the parish priests lived in the utmost
poverty, even in want. The immense Church pro-
perty, with a capital of four milliards and an income
of 200 millions, was quite unequally divided amongst
its servants. Whilst some disposed of colossal for-
Chapter IV.
† Taine, Les Origines de la France Contemporaine, i. 17-20, 54, 58.
Q 2
228
MADAME DE STAËL.
tunes and enjoyed several benefices at one time, and
in utter opposition to ecclesiastical law-others suffered
not merely from want, but had often to draw their
and
scanty income from communities no less poor
oppressed than themselves.
In the year 1768 the French parish priest had an
income averaging 500 livres, the curate only 250
livres, which in 1785 were respectively raised to 700
and 350 livres, whilst the Abbé de Vermont, reader
to the queen, received a salary of 80,000 livres, and
Loménie de Brienne, archbishop of Sens, enjoyed a
yearly income of 678,000 livres. The numerous
pamphlets which showed up this state of things in
the years immediately preceding the Revolution also
described the feelings that it must engender in the
parish clergy. One of them says, "There is much
abuse in the Church; those who serve the altar do
not live by the altar, but on the contrary those who
do not serve it.' The archbishop of Toulouse
himself admitted in 1775 that an old or infirm priest
had no refuge against the stress of poverty except in
the charity of his bishop.†
""*
Many of these bishops, who had never gone through
the trouble and experiences of parish work, only
despised those they were wont to designate as pré-
traille. Yet these were just the men who preserved
* Les Droits des Curés et des Paroisses considérée dans leur rapports
temporals et spirituels, 172.
† Essai sur la Réforme du Clergé, 12, par un Vicaire du Campagne,
docteur en Sorbonne, Paris, 1789.
Idem. Taine, Les Origines de la France Contemporaine: l'Ancien
Régime, i. 382.
CALONNE.
229
the honour of their calling by keeping religious con-
victions intact in the great majority of the people,
and nurturing those modest virtues which protect
civilisation and preserve a nation from decay against
the destructive tendencies of the upper classes and
literary circles of the capital.
In the ranks of these priests were to be found learned
theologians, and amongst their fellow-thinkers the
devout laymen, to whom Church doctrine and strict
practice had been handed down by the old French
catholicism, and who held to it with a tenacity which
provoked the admiration of Voltaire and even enlisted
the sympathy of a philosopher like Taine.*
This class, if any, had a right to expect justice
from the devout tendencies of the king.
Necker recognised this fact, and later on endea-
voured to draw the king's attention to these deserving
and natural allies in the struggle against privilege.†
But, as has been already said, it was decreed that
the old monarchy was to burn the Sybilline books,
one after the other, that fate had reserved for it.
During the latter days of the ancien régime there
was an increasing tendency to appropriate the eccle-
siastical benefices exclusively as a provision for the
descendants of the nobility; and the fifty thousand
French parish priests, wrongfully described as the
"lower clergy," and still more wrongfully consigned
* Voltaire, in Taine, Les Origines de la France Contemporaine, i. 95.
† Necker, De la Révolution Française. Euvres complètes, ix. 99
and 162.
230
MADAME DE STAËL.
to hopeless poverty by the policy of the day, gave
their vote in 1789 in favour of the Tiers.
Hand in hand with these measures in favour of the
privileged classes went an increase of taxation, bur-
dens, and debts, under the short administration of
Joly de Fleury. He fell in March 1783 without
having even attempted reform in any direction what-
soever.
After the death of Maurepas the king had announced
his intention of reigning alone.
There was nominally no prime minister, but Count
Vergennes at the head of foreign affairs was very
influential and showed undoubted ability in his de-
partment, although at the same time his home policy
was reactionary. After Joly de Fleury came the
honourable and conscientious d'Ormesson, who in
vain begged the king to relieve him of the unaccus-
tomed burden.
The attempt to substitute the system of the ferme
général by a royal direction is associated with his
short administration. This, for the time being, was
a pure loss, as Necker had considerably increased the
contracts with the ferme. At the end of seven months
d'Ormesson gave up his post without any remunera-
tion, upon which, in a private memorandum, the
Maréchal de Castries ventured to remind the king of
Necker's popularity. But it was quite in vain. Louis
let his personal dislike retain the upper hand, although
* Oncken, Das Zeitalter der Revolution, i. 41, note.
CALONNE FORCED TO INSTITUTE REFORMS. 231
the loans had reached the sum of 345 millions since
his retirement, and the king, who had bought Ram-
bouillet for fourteen millions, had only 300,000 livres
left in his treasury.
Thanks to the influence of Maria Theresa and
Mercy the queen favoured the candidature of Loménie
de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse, a follower of
the Economists and a friend of Turgot's. But on
this occasion Louis was mindful of Maurepas' advice,
never to let a priest be prime minister, and moreover
felt a personal antipathy to the prelate, whom he
knew to be both infidel and immoral.
Vergennes next proposed Calonne, the intendant
of Lille, who was backed by the queen's adherents,
the Polignacs, and above all by the Comte d'Artois.
He was hated alike by the king and the public, and
it required a series of intrigues to set him up.*
Niebuhr, who formed his impressions of the French
Revolution mostly by direct intercourse with those
immediately concerned, compares the brilliantly en-
dowed, frivolous untrustworthy Calonne to Egmont.†
The court had no restraint to encounter from him.
He encouraged expenditure; promised inexhaustible
resources; bought St. Cloud for the queen, who for
years had wished to possess it; increased pensions,
and reconciled the financial world to his monetary
operations by permitting it to profit by the need of
* A. Chérest, La chute de l'Ancien Régime, i. 32-37.
† Niebuhr, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Revolution, i. 152.
Augeard, Mémoires, 134.
232
MADAME DE STAËL.
the state. As amiable as he was pleasure-seeking, he
still could on occasion show an astonishing capacity
for work and imperturbable good humour under the
most adverse circumstances.
Although 1784 proved a disastrous year he enforced
the taxes with a severity which exceeded all precedent,
but without curtailing the expenditure. It was at
that time that he bought over Mirabeau, the people's
future tribune, to write up his various financial opera-
tions, and this in the further course of events led to
Mirabeau's secret mission to Berlin; * but Calonne
himself came into collision with the Parlements, and
these refused to ratify the royal edicts.
Necessity now accomplished what foresight, reason,
and honour ought to have brought about in a man
who "had fostered all manner of abuses and now
wished suddenly to abolish them."+
The "financial orgie" he had introduced was now
at an end, and with it the ruinous method whereby
the remains of the national property were diverted
into an exhausted treasury.
Without any circumspection or preparation Calonne
next drew a despairing picture of the state of affairs
which he had himself brought about and which had
become unendurable. In a memorial to the king he
required "the reform of everything that was bad in
the constitution of the state," but he also added the
celebrated sentence, "Abuses are what support the
* Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. i. 345, note.
† Malouet, Mémoires, i. 287.
HE SUMMONS THE NOTABLES.
233
monarchy." In his mouth this signified that they
smoothed the way for necessary changes. The plan
for taxing the privileged classes, attempted by Mach-
ault under Louis XV. in his temporary taxation of the
clergy, appeared again in the project of a universal
land-tax.
Homage was done to Turgot's ideas in calling to-
gether the people's assemblies and those of the dis-
tricts; in the reform of personal taxation; in the
abolition of guilds, and of the obligations imposed by
corporate bodies. In deference to their favourite
theory, free trade in corn was conceded to the Econo-
mists. The imposts between the provinces were to
cease, the hated gabelle, the salt-tax, was to dis-
appear: Necker's project for an assembly in all the
provinces, which had been rejected by each successive
government, was to be put into practice.
By promising a share in the future local govern-
ment to the landowners, the minister hoped to recon-
cile the nobility and clergy to the sacrifice his pro-
posal imposed upon them. One of the greatest evils
of the ancien régime, the insurmountable difficulty
of unravelling the tangled threads of its rule, finds
utterance in Calonne's desire for a uniform system of
administration. *
"What you now require of me," answered Louis
XVI., in reply to Calonne's last note, "is Necker's
recipe." Sire," was Calonne's reply, "we possess
* A. Chérest, La chute de l'Ancien Régime, Introduction, xix. and
82-85.
234
MADAME DE STAËL.
no better. "*
The thought seemed to imply that such
being the case it would be better to employ the
remedy first-hand.
The Parlements could not of course be counted on,
to carry out this programme. For a short time
Calonne thought of calling together the États Géné-
raux, but he was aware that his accounts would not
bear examination.+ A way out of the difficulty
offered itself in summoning together the notables;
and Mirabeau took pride in having been the first to
propose this line of action.
They had last been summoned by Henry IV. to take
counsel on the affairs of the state, and this circum-
stance contributed to win the king's consent, after
that of Vergennes and Miromesnil, the keeper of the
seals, had been obtained. The king was unaware of
the entire extent of the financial ruin, but the mere
thought that he was to be relieved of a part of his
responsibility led him to remark that "his happiness
deprived him of sleep." The queen never forgave
the fact that she was left out of the secret.
On the 22nd February, 1787, a hundred and forty
notables and about six or seven non-privileged mein-
bers of the Tiers assembled together in presence of
the king, and took council regarding the reforms to
be undertaken. Vergennes had died a few days
before. He was replaced as minister for foreign
*Pontécoulant, Mémoires, i. 80.
† Jefferson, Complete Works, Autobiography, i. 70. Droz, Histoire
de Louis XVI. i. 350.
CONFLICT BETWEEN CALONNE AND NECKER. 235
affairs by an honourable, rightminded, but weak man,
Armand Comte de Montmorin, once the king's play-
mate, and afterwards his confidant.
The notables divided themselves into seven bureaux,
declared themselves of one mind as to the principles
of reform, refused however to discuss them singly
before they were furnished with accurate information
on the state of the finances, and gave it clearly to be
understood that they had no intention of being
guided by a Calonne in these reforms.
In the course of affairs the Archbishop Dillon of
Narbonne and Dulau of Arles, along with La Fayette
and Castillon, the procurator-general of the Aix
parlement, announced that the right to impose
taxation evidently belonged, not to the king, but to
the États Généraux, which they desired at once to
summon together.*
Calonne had lost the game, as he could not grant
what was required of him without contributing to his
own ruin, whilst, without bringing the odium of the
refusal upon themselves, the privileged classes had
found a means of granting nothing. Calonne next
achieved a change of front, allowed his six memorials
to the notables to be publicly disseminated, and
declared himself ready to sacrifice the privileged
classes, and “in the name of justice to raise the money
from those who hitherto had not paid enough." † The
notables now found themselves respected and recog-
* Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. i. 482.
† Henri Martin, Histoire de France, xvi. 580.
236
MADAME DE STAËL.
nised as the representatives of liberty and the rights
of the people; and deserved this quite as little as the
parlement had deserved it before them,
The coalition against Calonne, in which, influenced
by the Abbé Vermont who was the friend of Loménie
de Brienne, the queen as well as the notables, the
court and most of the ministers, took part, was con-
siderably strengthened by the conflict between him
and Necker. Not long before the assemblage of the
notables, Necker had heard that Calonne intended to
cast doubt on the accuracy of the Compte Rendu in
his opening speech, and he appealed to him in writing
not to carry out this intention without giving him an
opportunity of defending himself. Calonne in his
frivolous way had assured him that he had no idea of
doing anything of the kind. To be sure he refrained
in his speech from any direct attack; but it never-
theless led to the conclusion that Necker's statement
had been incorrect. The latter begged the king to
allow him to exonerate himself, either in his presence
or before a committee of notables.
Louis XVI. notified that he was satisfied with his
services, but that he imposed silence upon him.
Necker had already taken a step which did not
incline the monarch more favourably towards him.
In the year 1784 he had published a book on
financial administration; 80,000 copies of it were
spread over Europe, and it met with almost unpa-
ralleled success.
In this book experiences were confirmed and fail-
NECKER'S BOOK ON FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION. 237
ures exposed, of which Necker alone as minister
could be cognisant,* and in it he further advanced
the leading thought of the Compte Rendu, the
principle of publicity and control in financial affairs,
which at the time had met with the king's approval,
but later on had ceased to do so.
Any allusion to this was taken as a reproach and a
reminder, and the king, who had been prejudiced
against Necker by all his successors, authorised one
of those mild official protests which were more to the
credit than to the disadvantage both of the books and
of the authors of that day.† After Calonne's attack
the question was no longer one of system or mere
difference of opinion, but of Necker's personal honour.
More than his popularity might depend on the
refusal to permit him to defend himself. He had
never renounced the idea of prosecuting the work of
reform begun in 1780, and had never lost sight of the
prospect of once again taking office.
Calonne was not the man who might venture with
impunity to question the integrity of one in whom all
the hopes of the nation were centred, unless he had
the most crushing proofs. But he could bring for-
ward none,
he had even failed to point out the self-
evident mistakes in the Compte Rendu. Necker had
now to choose between obeying the king (and thus
closing his public career) and the probability of a
* Niebuhr, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Revolution, i. 169.
† Auguste de Staël, Notice sur Monsieur Necker. Euvres complètes,
i. 188.
238
MADAME DE STAËL.
recall to the ministry, should he pay no heed to the
royal command.
He chose the latter course-now the less dangerous
of the two-and circulated a justification of his ad-
ministration amongst the notables which soon became
public property.
Joly de Fleury, the former minister, who was made
umpire in the quarrel, decided emphatically for Necker
and against Calonne.
Louis XVI. took the thing seriously to heart. At
first he was so annoyed that he told the queen he
should banish Necker from the land. She reminded
him of his deserts, his upright and disinterested con-
duct, but could not prevent the banishment of Necker
by lettre de cachet to forty miles distant from Paris.*
In one of the few letters known to have been written
by Necker to Madame de Staël he tells her the news
in a tone which gives a notion of the impression caused
by the king's displeasure in those days. He writes:
"My dear Minette--After mature consideration,
and with due respect for your last advice, we are to
start early to-morrow morning for Château Renard if
nothing prevent. I imagine that the château is of
considerable size, as the d'Outremonts and De Fou-
gerets lived in it every autumn. I have no idea what
the surrounding country is like. I rather dread your
dear mother's judgment, favourable or unfavourable
* Auguste de Staël, Notice sur M. Necker, i. 199-209. Wertheimer
Documents Inédits relatifs à Marie Antoinette. Revue Historique, 1884,
ii. 326. Mercy to Kaunitz, Paris, April 17, 1787.
MALLET DU PAN ON THE SITUATION IN PARIS. 239
it is always outspoken, but she is meanwhile in the
best possible frame of mind. At the end of the week
you must collect all the news; Germany's * letters, and
still more your own, which appear to have been
written during a rapid journey, have hitherto sup-
plied us with it.
"But that does not make up for my good Minette,
from whom I feel I have been separated for ages, and
whom I long to see again. Your dear mother will
give herself up to the complete rest she so much needs.
Sometimes I cannot help feeling that we have been
hardly dealt with in this forced change of abode.
Not on my own account, but on that of my wife, who
is known to be a great invalid, and on account of my
daughter's condition. All this adds to the severity
of my banishment, and I feel it more since I have
been left to myself and have tasted the evils of a
residence under a strange roof, added to which, the
expression 'temporary' that I used in my letter to
Baron de Breteuil seems to have made no impression.
But we all have plenty of time to moralise over the
whole thing. We have great compensation in the
universal sympathy, otherwise
but I can only
hear from you what follows."†
Failing Madame de Staël, our informant as to the
feeling in Paris on this occasion is Mallet du Pan,
who, although no partisan of Necker's, definitely and
truthfully writes: "Grief and dissatisfaction are loud
and universal; the crowd surrounded Necker's door
* Necker's brother.
† D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 189.
240
MADAME DE STAËL.
until the very instant of his departure
The
He has
archbishop of Toulouse, supported by the abbé de
Vermont, is to administer the finances.
apparently turned against Necker whose adherent he
was. Montmorin is supposed to be the minister most
in the king's confidence. Necker's party has tried
hitherto to serve the archbishop of Toulouse and has
done itself no good by it. It was asserted that he
had advised that Necker's pamphlet should be pub-
lished, that he might get rid of him, and thus free
himself both from Necker and Calonne.” *
Family documents, especially Madame Necker's
Mélanges, mention the friendship for the archbishop
of Toulouse, who, with the Maréchal and Madame de
Beauvan, the Dukes of Duras, Nivernois, du Châtelet,
De Castries, the archbishop of Narbonne, Tours, and
the bishop of Arras, belonged to their intimate circle
since Necker's retirement.
As far back as 1785, Baron de Staël had pointed
out the archbishop of Toulouse in a despatch to Gus-
tavus III. as one upon whom attention was centred
and as likely to be a future minister.†
In the Revolution, accelerated by Calonne, Madame
de Staël would never recognise the work of separate
individuals. But, as far as it could be laid to the
blame of one man, Calonne was answerable for it in
the eyes of Necker's daughter. Two of his colleagues,
* Mallet du Pan, Analecta sur l'Histoire du Temps. Unpublished
family papers, April, 1787.
† Baron A. de Staël, Notice sur M. Necker. Euvres complètes,
i. 221. A. Chérest, La chute de l'Ancien Régime, i. 198.
THE KING SELECTS BRIENNE OVER NECKER. 241
friends of Necker's, Ségur and de Castries, who owed
their appointments to him, now considered that the
moment had come for recommending his recall to the
monarch. The king hesitated, but was on the
point of giving his consent, although unwillingly.
At this juncture Breteuil, trading upon the king's
well-known dislike to Necker, remarked, that, if he
were recalled from banishment to take the head of
affairs, his pride and arrogance would be unbearable.
Alluding to the past discussion, in a work he pub-
lished in 1796 on the subject of the French Revolution,
Necker certainly gives strong proof of his self-confi-
dence when he says, "The king's choice was moment-
arily directed towards me. Had it remained stead-
fast, all that has happened would have been avoided;"
and he adds pointedly, "There would still have been
time to make another treaty with public opinion..
I have no doubts on the subject: a thoroughly wise
Government would have appeased the disquietude
that was now turning the thoughts of the nation to
the summoning of the États Généraux."
Louis XVI. had become accustomed to the adroit
Calonne, who saved him the trouble of ruling, and
had approved of the minister's policy in the Assembly
of the Notables two months before; but the notables
now raised such complaints against the prime minister
that he was obliged to take refuge in England.
To avoid the trouble of a definite resolve, the king
next chose Fourqueux, who had "the most incapable
head," says Madame de Staël, "ever surmounted by
VOL. I.
Ꭱ
242
MADAME DE STAËL.
the wig of a councillor of state, and who now took
his official position like a man sent to keep a place
in a box before the piece begins." *
But the need was pressing, and as the king would
not have Necker he had now to resign himself to the
choice of Loménie de Brienne. He was only ap-
pointed finance minister at the outset, but the king
subsequently became possessed of a dull indifference,
only increased by the activity of this, the most fate-
ful of his councillors.
The queen was not the only one to be mistaken
in Brienne. He had won favour by his great success
in the administration of Languedoc, which, owing to
its special conditions, was the best-governed province
in France.
The democratic Jefferson, who went the length of
saying that had it not been for the queen there
would have been no Revolution, and did not hesitate
to say that he would have shut her up in a convent,
lavished even greater praise on the Archbishop of
Toulouse than she did; he called him "a virtuous,
patriotic, and able character;" preferred him for the
moment to Necker; and for years after the Revolu-
tion still held him to be a "capable statesman, eager
for reform, doing all that he could at such a court."†
La Fayette was of the same opinion when he spoke
* Madame de Staël, Considérations sur la Révolution Française.
Euvres complètes, xii. 127.
† Jefferson, Works, i. Autobiography, 70, 101-102; ii. 258 and 310.
Lettres of August 31st and November 3rd, 1787; iii. 52, Lettre,
June 14, 1789.
OPINIONS UPON BRIENNE.
243
of Loménie de Brienne as the most capable and
honourable man who could be appointed prime
minister.* On this head Baron de Staël was better
informed when he wrote to King Gustavus III. that
Louis XVI. had taken Brienne because he could
not help himself. "The fright,” he says,
(6 was so
universal, the need of some ruling power was so
much felt, that he was received with open arms.
The ministers themselves were so disquieted that
they could offer no opposition to his appointment.
But he is unstable and changeable," adds Baron de
Staël in July," and this absence of decision is very
general in the nation. Patriotism is nearly extinct,
and there is an inclination to suppose that great aims
can be accomplished without great sacrifices." †
The last mention we find of Loménie de Brienne
by the Necker family is in Madame de Staël's
Considérations. She calls him a clever man, who in
ordinary times would have possessed the necessary
capacity for his office. He had not, however, shown
himself to be more earnest in tone than his prede-
cessor Calonne.t
In April 1787 Madame de Staël had hastened to
join her father in his banishment.
"I was very
* La Fayette, Mémoires et Correspondance, ii. 195 and 199. Letters
to John Jay and Washington.
† Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-
Holstein, 58 and 60. Despatches No. 61, 63, and 65, of May 31 and
July 8, 1787.
Madame de Staël, Considérations sur la Révolution Française.
Œuvres complètes, xii. 120, 129, and 135.
R 2
244
MADAME DE STAËL.
young at the time," she mentions later on; "a lettre
de cachet seemed a terrible fate to me. I screamed
aloud when I heard of it, and could conceive no more
dreadful disaster." *
This feeling soon gave way before a feeling of
pride in all the proofs of sympathy which were
bestowed on Necker. But she never overcame her
bitterness with regard to the behaviour of the court,
and specially that of the queen, of whose mediation
on her father's behalf she had no knowledge, and
towards the end of the short exile it finds expression
in writing to Baron de Staël, who had remained in
Paris: "I thank you, my dear friend," she says,
"for the letter you sent me by Madame de Beauvau.
I had been rather vexed that M. de Crillon had
brought me none. You see that the queen has treated
you no better on this occasion than she did on a
former, for nothing would have been easier than to
let you know that the lettre de cachet was withdrawn.
It is only an ordinary attention which she shows to
every one to whom she wishes to be gracious.
"I consider therefore that it is more than ever
important to maintain great reserve; but, if she shows
any wish to see you, then speak to her as we agreed
you should do, in a manner worthy of my father.
"Let it be felt that the termination of this exile is
much more important for the king and queen than
for my father; that the coldness and indifference you
* Madame de Staël, Notice sur le Caractère de M. Necker et sur
sa Vie privee. Œuvres complètes, xviii. 35.
ON NECKER'S BANISHMENT.
245
have personally experienced have given you a great
deal of pain; and lastly, bring the fact to notice that
you have never spoken about my father to the queen.
"I feel that everything I am now writing can be
said perfectly well if you manage with your wonted
carefulness, and speak firmly and respectfully, espe-
cially if it is the queen who summons you.
"You have not answered my letter concerning the
journey to Fontainebleau. If your position and due
regard to your king's dignity permitted, I confess to
you that I would never again set foot in Versailles.
It would have delighted me to solace my offended
pride by this voluntary banishment. But as our
position does not allow of such a decided step I think
that a few audiences with the queen and a few days'
stay during the hunting and theatricals will give no
ground at my age for suspecting me of intrigues or
of wishing to obtain special favour with the queen.
“The fact that M. de Montmorin is your foreign
minister will make my visit to Fontainebleau a great
deal more agreeable than those we paid in the days of
Vergennes." *
These lines were written shortly before the birth
of her first son.
Necker's banishment had not lasted altogether
more than a couple of months, and was thought by
Madame Necker to have passed all too quickly, for
she preferred the happiness of spending her days in
peace and quiet, alone with her husband, to any other.†
* D'Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker, ii. 191.
† Madame Necker, Mélanges. Letter to Saint Lambert, Aug. 19, 1787.
246
MADAME DE STAËL.
On his return to Paris Necker found the assembly
of notables dissolved.
The king had been bitterly disappointed in his hope
of receiving counsel and help from them in matters
of political economy. Loménie de Brienne had cer-
tainly laid a statement of affairs before them in his
capacity of minister, as he had so urgently required
of his predecessor in office when he himself was
merely a notable. But these could make nothing of
the unintelligible and insufficient information;* they
were content to take average figures, to recommend
economy with a warning against contracting new
debts, and to propose that a yearly statement of
accounts should be submitted to a special commission.
They certainly instilled the principle of equally
divided imposts and burdens as before, but they
ended up with the announcement that they were not
disposed to suggest or consent to any fresh taxation.
When the assembly broke up on the 25th of May
they had, as a matter of fact, achieved nothing except
a change of ministry, and a public statement of the
"terrible beginning of the approaching evil.” †
Thus a merely negative result in the chain of
events had been achieved by summoning the notables.
The actual outcome of Calonne's administration lay in
his adoption of the plan of provincial assemblies formu-
lated by Necker, approved of by the notables, and now
* Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI., i. 387.
† Speech of the first President of the Parisian Parlement in the
final sitting of the notables, May 25, 1787.
PROVINCIAL ASSEMBLIES SUMMONED.
frankly adopted by Brienne.
247
The economist Dupont
further under Calonne,
de Nemours developed it still
without encountering the same difficulties as Necker
and Turgot had to overcome. Calonne and Brienne
took a step still further in advance, which Necker had
shrunk from doing, when they fell back on Turgot's
plan of popular and departmental representation.
In the former the parish priests and proprietors had
seats and votes: the rest of the members, always
consisting of three, six, or nine, according to the
extent of the community, were to be the free choice
of all those who paid a tax of ten livres on their
property or their personalty, and this came to much
the same thing as universal suffrage.*
This first assembly had to choose another, the district
assembly,—and this again had to select the provincial
assembly, the organization of which remained very
much the same as Necker had left it
All the members took council together without class
distinction, and the Tiers supplied as many deputies
as the nobility and the clergy together. The
presidents were chosen out of the two first orders, and
pending the complete organization of the whole,
(which did not take place before the outbreak of the
Revolution) the king chose half the members, and
those again chose the other half. Votes were taken
by head and not by order. On the prorogation of
the notables, Brienne specially pledged himself to the
latter measure as a compensation to the Tiers for the
* Lavergne, Les Assemblées Provinciales, 107, 109.
248
MADAME DE STAËL.
advantages derived by the privileged classes from
their property and rank.
During the year 1787 nineteen of these provincial
assemblies began a career which, even under the un-
favourable circumstances then predominating, would
have borne good fruit if their work had not been pre-
maturely put to an end. None of these assemblies
met more than once before the Revolution.† Whilst
an effort was being made to pave the way in the
country towards establishing these institutions the
task of the Government was rendered abortive in the
midst of its activity. It had been expected that, im-
mediately on consent of the king, Brienne would
carry forward the measures instituted by his prede-
cessors and approved of by the notables, by summon-
ing together a special séance royale, and thus securing
their acceptance by the Parlement.
He contented himself instead with ordinances con-
cerning the calling together of the provincial assem-
blies, with freeing the corn trade, and abolishing
public burdens.
The Parlement offered no opposition. It waited
for a better opportunity to revenge itself for the
summoning of the notables and to reinstate its over-
shadowed authority without losing the people's favour
by doing it. This opportunity soon arose. Brienne
had two financial edicts ready; the one proposed a
territorial subvention, that is, a ground-tax, which was
* Lavergne, Les Assemblées Provinciales, 107 and 389.
Idem, 128.
LOMÉNIE DE BRIENNE LOSES TIME.
249
to meet the requirements of the Treasury and to be
shared by every one alike and without exception in
favour of the privileged classes; the other was a
stamp-tax, and the ill-advised minister laid this first
before the Parlement. The latter began, as the
notables had done, by demanding exact information
as to the finances, but it soon found that this was
over-stepping its prerogative; and chose a better point
of attack against Brienne, when, using the Abbé
Sabatier de Cabre as its mouthpiece, it announced
for the first time that it had no right to dispose of the
finances as it hitherto had done, and that the États
Généraux alone could grant subsidies and raise taxes at
indeterminate times. It was added, that monarchs
must be reminded of the old traditions of the kingdom·
It is true that this extreme step was only taken
with a full grasp of its consequences by men like
Duval d'Espréménil, an enthusiast for the rights of
the body to which he belonged, a few earnest sup-
porters of the theories of reform in the tone of the
old Jansenist Parlementeers, or by younger men like
Duport and Fréteau, who shared the admiration enter-
tained by La Fayette and his followers for American
institutions and for the results of the Revolution in
America.
The rest, and they represented by far the greater
number, reckoned that the Government would consent
to any proposal advanced by their Parlement rather
than summon the États Généraux.
When however the Parisian Parlement, without
250
MADAME DE STAËL.
consideration for the king, pronounced the finance
edicts he had wished to pass to be "illegal, null, and
void," he forthwith banished it to Troyes.
Brienne made use of the serious disturbance in
Paris to have himself named prime minister, upon
which Necker's friends Ségur and de Castries were
recalled. During the exile to Troyes it was soon
seen what a small number of the Parlementeers had
been in earnest as to the step they had ventured to
take. This assembly, which had not retired into
banishment" because it had defended their privileges,
but because it had sacrificed them,"* felt incapable
of enduring the dullness of a provincial town in
September, and notwithstanding the protestations of
d'Espréménil and his adherents voted financial con-
cessions, upon which Brienne also gave in, and with-
drew his two edicts, although he had described them
as indispensable. The Parisian populace celebrated
the return of the Parlement by burning the Duchesse
de Polignac and Breteuil in effigy. A similar demon-
stration against the queen was only just stopped in time.
Two months later Brienne saw he could only procure
money by proposing another edict which required
420 millions; the total to be paid off in five years;
and promised that the États Généraux should be
summoned to assemble in the year 1792 after this time
had elapsed. At the séance royale which was held on
* Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-
Holstein, 64. Despatch of the 16th August, 1787.
DISPUTES IN THE PARLEMENT.
251
the 19th of November for this purpose, the minister
caused all the attributes of absolute power to be re-
capitulated to the king and to the keeper of the great
seal, and declared the king to possess sole power, with-
out restraint or interference.
Supported by various adherents d'Espréménil replied
with the request that the estates should be called to-
gether not later than 1789.
The assembly seemed on the whole willing to meet
the king's wishes, when the keeper of the seal, sud-
denly and without heeding the general dissent, pro-
cured the command for the promulgation of the edicts
from the king. No sooner was this command made
known than the Duke of Orleans rose to protest
against it.
In one of the edicts, Malesherbes, who had mean-
while joined the ministry, had given the Protestants
their rights as citizens which they had so long coveted.
After it was read the king left the assembly, which
Malesherbes and the Duke of Nivernais tried in vain to
appease. Thus began the political rôle of the Duke of
Orleans, who, on account of his extraordinary conduct,
had hitherto been the object of universal contempt.
Madame de Staël has related in her letters to Gus-
tavus III. how Louis XVI. had banished the duke;
that, although he had long been at enmity with the
queen, he preferred demeaning himself to ask her to
intercede for him rather than to remain at one of his
country seats.
But the Parisian Parlement continued to enjoy
252
MADAME DE STAËL.
popularity, and all who opposed the Government
from any cause whatsoever turned to it without
exception. The same d'Espréménil who had required
the king to grant liberty to the people desperately
opposed the edict in favour of the Protestants, whilst
a short time afterwards the Archbishop Dillon of
Narbonne solemnly thanked the king for it in the
assembly of the clergy.*
Madame de Staël describes the scene as one never
to be forgotten; she then says of d'Espréménil, with
whom she was personally acquainted, "He was cer-
tainly an energetic, noble creature, this unhappy and
eloquent tribune of the magistracy. But he was also
easily influenced and of an uncertain temperament,
and his leanings to Martini's doctrines bore curious
fruit.
"In 1788 he imagined that he had seen the Holy
Virgin, and that she had recommended him to pro-
test in Parlement against Malesherbes' edict which
relieved the legitimate children of Protestants from
the stain of illegitimacy. He obeyed her commands,
and, pointing to the picture of the Crucified One,
exclaimed in the pathetic tone of a Capuchin, 'See
you not that his wounds bleed afresh ?
The situation between the ministers and Parlement
was no longer tenable, and everything pointed to a
speedy catastrophe, which Brienne in vain tried to
avert.
* Lavergne, Les Assemblées Provinciales, 409.
† Lacretelle, Testament Politique et Littéraire, ii. 70.
STRUGGLE IN THE PARLEMENT.
253
To prepare against emergencies the Parisian Parle-
ment met together on the 3rd May, 1788, in solemn
conclave. D'Espréménil read the celebrated declara-
tion freely granting subsidies by means of the États
Généraux, as the mouthpiece of the nation; also the
establishment of the rights and capitulation-grants of
the provinces, the institution of permanent judges,
the introduction of royal edicts into Parlement only
where they agreed with the fundamental laws of the
province and of the state; and further, the inviolable.
right of every individual to be judged by the law
only, the king and every class in the kingdom being
bound to respect law and justice.
The Government answered by repudiating these
resolutions and by the issue of a warrant to arrest
Duval d'Espréménil and Goislard.
The Parlement now met in solemn assembly; troops
appeared before the Palace of Justice; and at mid-
night the Marquis d'Agoult demanded that a major
of the garde française should be admitted into the
chamber where the deliberations were taking place,
and delivered the royal letter issuing the warrant for
the apprehension of these two members.
•
D'Agoult, who was unacquainted with them, in-
vited the assembly to point them out to him, upon
which there was a unanimous cry, "We are all
d'Espréménil and Goislard!"
D'Agoult retired to take further orders regarding
a situation that had been unforeseen, and only on
the following day a sitting which had lasted thirty
254,
MADAME DE STAËL.
hours came to an end and procured a moral triumph,
although the two members were arrested.
The Parlement was now summoned to Versailles
on the 8th of May, and new edicts were proposed,
which, under other circumstances, would have earned
the thanks of the nation.
One of these was for the abolition of torture;
another guaranteed weighty reform in the transaction
of justice, which had been partly carried out by
Malesherbes at the cost of the judicial power hitherto
exercised by the Parlement. But the salutary work-
ing of these measures disappeared before the con-
sequences of others to follow, for every one was
aware that these only served as their prelude.
A further royal edict ordered the establishment or
the restoration of a high court of justice, the Cour
Plénière. No one had hitherto thought of the exist-
ence of such an arrangement, but it was endeavoured
to assimilate this suddenly-awakened revival of the
customs of the past with imaginary and historical
tradition.* All the royal edicts and commands were
in future to come before this court of justice. It was
to be composed of the high officers of the realm and
a certain number of the members of all the parle-
ments, and the king himself was to preside.
·
Nothing was left to the parlements but the intro-
duction of measures relating to purely local matters,
and for the time being they were not to re-assemble.
* Henri Martin, Histoire de France, xvi. 664, note.
FIRST SYMPTOMS OF THE REVOLUTION.
255
The weightiest questions, the answers to which were
awaited with the greatest anxiety by all classes, were
left undetermined by Brienne, or set aside with con-
tradictory statements, which on the whole aimed at
maintaining the integrity of absolute power for the
monarchy. His sole concession was an indefinite
allusion to the summoning of the États Généraux,
and until that assembled the Cour Plénière was to
settle all taxation.
The beginning of the French Revolution may be
dated from the 8th of May, 1788, if this comprehen-
sive and often misunderstood term expresses the
moment when, as Mounier says, the Government capri-
ciously and unlawfully employs force, and those who
are governed take to armed resistance and yet remain
unpunished.*
In Madame de Staël's opinion the Revolution began
when the Parlement, represented by the Abbé
Sabatier, asserted the right of the people to possess
those full powers which they had so obstinately re-
fused to the crown. The first proofs of open oppo-
sition to the king's ill-advised command were given
by those parlementeers and nobles who were ap-
pointed to compose the Cour Plénière. They hesi-
tated to obey, and thus prepared a sudden termina-
tion to Brienne's stroke of policy.
A close bond of union was established between the
* Mounier, Les Assemblées Provinciales, 382.
† Madame de Staël, Considérations sur la Révolution Française.
Euvres, xii. 131.
256
MADAME DE STAËL.
deputies and the aristocracy by his unwise proceed-
ings, and this fostered a spirit of opposition in the
army-now almost entirely officered by the nobility.
No less dangerous was the satisfaction derived by
the parlementary party from the approval of the
masses, and the support which the representatives of
the law did not hesitate to accept from the street
population.
The first scene of this sort in honour of d'Espré-
ménil rapidly awoke the spirit of uproar in the
provinces.
During the early summer of 1788 the inhabitants
of Brittany imagined that they were on the eve of
civil war.
The governor, Comte de Thiard, weakly
prevented the troops from interfering with the tumult.*
The intendant of the province, Bertrand de Molle-
ville, was obliged to fly, and those who were sub-
sequently to fight in the Vendée found their way
for the present into the Bastille.‡
In Pau and Béarn the populace hastened down
from the mountains to insist that their parlement
should be reinstated. But the most important of
these scenes of disorder began in Dauphiné.
When first united to the French crown this province
* Baron Grimm, quoted by Smith in his Lectures on the French
Revolution, i. 134. Thiers, Histoire de la Révolution Française, i. 14.
† Lavergne, Les Assemblées Provinciales, 421, 426. Droz,
Histoire de Louis XVI. ii. 69, 71.
A. de Tocqueville, Coup d'œil sur le règne de Louis XVI. 280
and 283.
FIRST SIGNS OF OPPOSITION IN FRANCE.
257
had retained its representative assembly, and after
its suspension under Louis XIII. it had never ceased
to claim its restoration. In 1779 Necker's attempt
to substitute it by a provincial assembly proved un-
successful.
When Brienne repeated the attempt in 1787 and
banished the contumacious parlementary party the
peasantry rang the alarm-bells, forcibly prevented
the measure from being carried out, and threatened
to hang the Duke of Clermont Tonnerre to the
chandelier of his reception-rooms if the keys of the
Palace of Justice were not delivered into their
hands.
There, after a short encounter, in which two regi-
ments unwillingly allowed themselves to be led
against the victorious populace, the deputies chosen
by the three orders met together and decided that
the old system of representation should be revived in
Dauphiné, without further ratification from the king,
on the 21st of July, and afterwards they declared
that the law had to be very carefully observed if
a monarch's legitimate rights were to be distinguished
from despotism, and that the safety of individuals
could in no case be attacked without endangering
the whole nation.
Any upholder and supporter of the May edict was.
accused of treachery to the king, the nation, and the
constitution. In this the nobility and clergy took
the lead, whilst the Tiers, which at first resisted these
VOL. I.
S
258
MADAME DE STAËL.
extreme steps, was only influenced in their favour
by Mounier, one of the royal judges in Grenoble,
who, although only thirty years old, had already
acquired extraordinary respect on the part of his
fellow-citizens.
The Government replaced Clermont Tonnerre by
the Maréchal de Vaux, and placed twenty thousand
men at his disposal, and this new governor, who had
a reputation for energy, could do nothing further
than conform to what he could no longer prevent.
The only concession he obtained was that the repre-
sentatives of the estates should assemble at the neigh-
bouring castle of Vizille, instead of at Grenoble as
first arranged.
Under the probable leadership of Mounier, who
was supported by his young friend Barnave, it was
here determined that the king should be requested to
grant the États Généraux for the whole nation, and
the regular calling together of the estates for all the
provinces, and for both that the Tiers should be
equally represented with the privileged orders, and
that the votes should be taken in one assembly, and
by persons; upon which the six hundred deputies at
Vizille took an oath not to forget the rights of the
nation whilst endeavouring to re-acquire those of
their own province.
The representations to the king, which were drawn
up by Mounier, already closed with the favourite
formula of the Revolution, borrowed from the Con-
DAUPHINÉ.
259
trat Social: "That the rights of men are derived
from Nature alone, and are independent of all con-
tracts.
""*
This was the origin-and it was of wide and his-
torical importance of what Madame de Staël calls
"the peaceful, well-thought-out, insurrection in the
Dauphiné," and it was in point of fact the prologue
to the Revolution.
This example inspired others. Most of the pro-
vinces supplied protests from the parlements and
estates, and information concerning the existing dis-
order, the constant confusion and ferment, which the
minister met by repressive measures, all the more
exasperating because inadequate. A storm of ill-will
was especially directed against the lettres de cachet.
Lavergne in vain recalled the fact that they had been
less employed in the reign of Louis XVI. than in
that of any other monarch. Once aroused, the con-
sciousness of the unlawful tyranny of this mode of
procedure could no longer be appeased by ordinary
methods.‡
In the Generalités of Bordeaux and Besançon, in
La Rochelle and Limoges, the introduction of pro-
vincial assemblies had meanwhile been unsuccessful,
and it now became a question how far the Govern-
ment was able to enforce its authority in the rebellious
provinces.
*Lanzac de Laborie, Jean Joseph Mounier, 13-20. Lavergne, Les
Monarchien de la Constituante. Revue des Deux Mondes, 1842, ii. 551.
† Madame de Staël, Considérations. Euvres, xii. 208.
Lavergne, Les Assemblées Provinciales, 378-379.
S 2
260
MADAME DE STAËL.
The necessity for raising money had now become
so pressing that as a last resource Brienne determined
on applying to the clergy, and to that end he sum-
moned them to Paris in extraordinary conclave.
He brought the idea of confiscating the conventual
property before his colleagues, and reckoned prin-
cipally on his intimate knowledge of all the circum-
stances and individuals to win over the assembly to
his views and make it possible to carry them out.
But even here he found opinion so altered that he
was obliged to reduce his demands to a modest sum,
and was unable to pass the May edict or obtain approval
of his past policy.
Although the clergy refused all pecuniary sacrifice
in the same way as the nobility and magistracy had
done, they were just as popular by reason of their
opposition to the Government. They too invited the
monarch rather to be king of the French than lord
over France, and to call together the États Généraux
as soon as possible.
The answer of the Government was about as mo-
mentous as these resolutions of the Assembly. It
now granted to the clergy what it had refused to the
parlements, and, forced by the universal excitement,
pledged itself in definite words to the principle that
the sovereign could only levy grants by consent of
the États Généraux.* By the 8th of August they
were summoned to appear on the 1st of May, 1789,
"Réponse du roi
Leser, Necker's Second Administration, 58-60.
aux remontrances du clergé, 15 Juin, 1788."
NEGOTIATIONS WITH NECKER.
261
by royal decree, and the sittings of the Cour plenière
were for the time suspended. A few days later, on
the 16th August, 1788, the alarming announcement
was published by edict that the payments of the
royal treasury must be partly suspended and partly
curtailed; only three-fifths of the necessary payments
were to be in specie, the rest were to be settled
in promissory notes. In other words, this was an
acknowledgment of state bankruptcy with assets of
only sixty per cent., whilst to keep the machinery of
the Government in working order nearly a million
livres were required daily.*
Madame de Staël was quite right when she wrote
to King Gustavus that the history of France might be
told in epigrams. Brienne added one to the number.
He is said to have remarked that "there were so
many chances and yet it only needed one to save the
State."
As this chance did not turn up he had no hesitation
in laying hands upon the funds of the Invalides and
the proceeds of a lottery for the poor. Then, when
he had tried everything, he entered into negociations
with Necker, whom he sought to associate with his
financial administration, by the queen's wish made
known through Mercy-d'Argenteau on the 20th August.
What would have been possible a year sooner was
however no longer possible; Necker answered Mercy's
* Jefferson, Works, Correspondence, iii. 40.
† Darest, Histoire de France, vii. 132.
262
MADAME DE STAËL.
overtures with the demand that Brienne should be
dismissed, that he himself should be placed at the
head of affairs, and that the promise of the assemblage
of the estates should be fulfilled.*
Under the extraordinary pressure of the universal
wish of the nation, his point of view on the latter
subject had also undergone a change. He, who on
the dismissal of Calonne had declared that it should
be the first act of a wise minister to refuse to call
the États Généraux together, now made it an essen-
tial condition, and "awaited the moment," as he
says himself, "with indescribable joy, in which the
elevating and splendid spectacle of the assemblage
of the representatives of six and twenty million men
was to take place, and the justice of the monarchs of
the French nation to resume its former influence over
the course of public affairs." †
There remained no further doubt that Necker would
decline to accept the unlucky legacy of Brienne and
Calonne unless he was promised the support and the
control of the nation. "No time should be lost," he
writes on the controversy that had then arisen, against
Calonne. "Public opinion, this moral and political
force, must wipe out the past and bind the present to
the future." & Necker had held similar opinions
* Auguste de Staël, Notice sur M. Necker. Euvres complètes, 225.
Leser, Necker's Second Administration, 21, 22.
† Necker, Nouveaux éclaircissement sur le compte-rendu au Roi. De.
l'Administration, etc. Euvres, ii. 599, vi. 59. De la Révolution Fran-
çaise, ix. 53.
Idem, ii. 467.
•
RETIREMENT OF BRIENNE.
263
during his first term of office, and they equally held
good under new conditions.
He consulted public opinion as he had done
formerly; whether he was to guide it time alone
could tell. Mercy again returned to the charge,
officially authorised by the king. Brienne's dis-
missal was silently conceded. He received it on
the 25th of August, not before he had exchanged his
archbishopric of Toulouse for that of Sens, which
was considerably more profitable; increased his in-
come to eight times a hundred thousand livres; and
obtained the queen's promise to intercede for a car-
dinal's hat for him.
History only once mentions his name again, and
that is to chronicle how the last unworthy adviser
of an absolute monarchy put an end to his own life
by taking poison on the 16th February, 1794. On
the evening previous to his retirement Necker's
appointment as director of finance was confirmed.
Two days later he was minister and member of the
council. The rank of premier was not again con-
ferred, but Necker possessed all its prerogatives.
Moral ruin went side by side with this financial ruin,
even exceeding the latter in its far-reaching effects.
Confidence in the Government was as exhausted as
the treasury. Since Louis XVI. had ascended the
throne, more abuses had been abolished, more
improvements introduced, than had been the case
during the whole of the preceding century. Adam
Smith bears witness that the French Government
264
MADAME DE STAËL.
under this monarch was more humane than any other
on the Continent after the abolition of the lettres de
cachet and of abuses in the taxation, especially in the
matter of the Taille.*
Almost a hundred years after him, Tocqueville
draws attention to the share that the reforms instituted
by the ancien régime had in its fall. Not merely
had the Government assented to just demands, but it
had shown itself more enlightened in important
questions than the great national corporations. Thus
the institution of provincial assemblies was incompar-
ably more favourable to a free development and
participation in public affairs than the old-fashioned
assemblies were. It was the king who abolished
torture and who employed Malesherbes to offer legal
reforms to the parlements, only to be rejected by them.
The edict in favour of non-Catholics was enforced
by Government notwithstanding the opposition of the
clergy and the magistracy. The censorship existed
only in name. Brienne demanded freedom for the
press on the eve of his overthrow.
Many of the most detested privileges of the nobility
and clergy had fallen into disuse; the imposts in the
interior had lapsed; the ideas of the economists with
regard to the corn-laws, especially in connection with
trade and industry, had been for the most part
carried out.
The score of guilt attached to the ancien régime,
* Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Collected Works, xviii. 296,
note.
NECKER CHARACTERIZES THE ANCIEN RÉGIME, 265
as drawn up by Jefferson amongst others, was already
wiped out, or on the point of being so.* But, in
proportion as the evil diminished, the want of con-
fidence appeared to increase, for the king's will was
the only guarantee for reform, and he hesitated be-
tween his natural impulses, which were always good,
and the surrounding influences, which went con-
stantly from one extreme to another.
He
People had not forgotten that Louis XVI. had
passed over Machault, impeached Turgot, tolerated
Calonne, and reposed confidence in Brienne.
now accepted Necker's ministry as an experiment
forced upon him, with the honourable intention
of upholding it, and at the same time cherishing a
secret hope that it might wear itself out.
What was to happen next no one knew.
Necker rightly characterizes the old French rule as
having all the necessary means at its disposal for main-
taining the laws of property, order, and liberty, but as
having also the power of setting all these laws at
defiance.
"Without any inconvenient inquiries," he says,
"the king's decision could reduce the interest on the
national debt or suspend the repayment of the prin-
cipal; by means of a royal sitting, or lit de justice,
it could prescribe taxes or extend them, and by a
lettre de cachet it could deprive whomsoever it
pleased of his freedom." +
* Jefferson, Complete Works, Autobiography, i. 86.
† Necker, Du pouvoir exécutif dans les Grands États. Euvres,
viii. 592.
Uor M
266
MADAME DE STAËL.
•
An observation made at that time by Marie Antoi
nette testifies to the existence of the predominating
feeling that the fate of a whole nation practically
depended on a caprice. Not only were the États
Généraux promised, but the date of their assembly
was fixed, when she wrote to the Emperor Joseph
that she hoped that the expected French intervention
would be avoided in the Dutch disturbances, "for
in the event of a war it would be no longer possible
to avert the summoning of the states." *
So, with the exception of the courtiers whose
opinions the queen expressed, there was scarcely any
one left in France who thought it possible to con-
tinue in the old paths and to depend on the king's
good intentions alone.
By far the greater number said with La Fayette:
"We will have the États Généraux or nothing." +
The ancien régime had reached this point when
Necker undertook the conduct of affairs, and pledged
his word that for the future government should be
carried on in the full light of day and with the entire
consent of the nation. The people received him with
acclamation. Paris overflowed with pamphlets, pic-
tures, and allegories in his honour. Demonstrations
in his favour took place in the theatres, and his name
was shouted enthusiastically when the verses in Collin
* Arneth, Marie Antoinette, Joseph II. and Leopold II. Letters, 118.
Marie Antoinette to the Emperor Joseph, 16th July, 1788.
† La Fayette, Mémoires, ii. 229. Letter of the 25th May, 1788.
Maou
PUBLIC OPINION.
267
d'Harleville's comedy, Les Chateaux en Espagne, were
spoken: "Je choisirais d'abord un ministre honnête
homme. Le choix est bientôt fait quand le public le
nomme.” *
"Wonders are expected of Necker," wrote his son-
in-law to King Gustavus, "and no one doubts that
in a few years, if it is confided to his charge, France
will be born again. The confidence reposed in him
is unbounded. It would be difficult to over-estimate
the love and respect that his genius, his moderation,
his disposition, the purity of his private life, have
inspired." +
Although not without a struggle, even the opposing
nobility resigned themselves—at any rate, outwardly
-to the minister they were obliged to endure. In
the first days of his administration the general in
command in Lorraine, Comte Clairon d'Haussonville,
and the Maréchal Duc de Broglie, met in his ante-
chamber. "Let us go in together," said the latter
to the count; "I am not acquainted with Necker:
you can introduce me."
him ?" replied the other.
introduce each other," said the
was what they ended by doing.
"So
you think that I know
"In that case we can
marshal, and this
The descendants
of both married Necker's grand-daughters. D'Hausson-
ville, who was one of them, tells the anecdote.
* Grimm, Correspondance Littéraire, xiv. 325.
† Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-
Holstein, 88. Despatch No. 100, August 31, 1788.
Comte D'Haussonville, Souvenirs et Mélanges: Vie de mon
Père, 9.
DorM
268
MADAME DE STAËL.
Baron Staël mentions that the preliminary steps to-
wards Necker's recall proceeded from the queen. The
opposition at court seemed so far overcome that no
further intrigues complicated the first months of his
administration.*
Even the discreet Malouet, who passed severe
judgment on Necker as a statesman, testifies that he
was superior to most of his opponents both in talent
and in personal merit, and that all the disorder and
mistakes leading to the États Généraux were to be
reckoned from his first retirement.†
Dumont, Mirabeau's friend, confesses that Necker
was la divinité du moment. Even Rivarol, who
attacked his religious philosophy, gave unstinting
praise to Necker as minister.§
This being the public tone of mind, Necker's own
family could scarcely show greater sobriety of judg-
ment. Even Madame Necker looked to the future
with confidence and hope, as everything now seemed
to satisfy the wish of her life and to play into her
husband's hands. ||
And Madame de Staël? Her state of excitement
* Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-
Holstein, 116. 1788.
† Malouet, Mémoires, i. 199.
Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, 44.
§ Lescure, Rivarol et la Société française pendant la Révolution et
l'Emigration, 147.
|| Lettres Inédites de la Marquise de Créqui à Sénac de Meilhan,
210. Letter of September, 1788.
HER EXCITEMENT.
269
was such that the Marquise de Créqui (the friend and
correspondent of Sénac de Meilhan, Necker's sys-
tematic opponent) took occasion to doubt her sanity.
Sainte-Beuve on the contrary remarks that cooler
heads should excuse her enthusiasm just because of
her intellect.*
When Necker, to whom she was the first to bring
the news to St. Ouen of his nomination, saw the
manifest pride and joy shining out of her eyes, he
felt that the daughter of a minister only saw the
advantages without the terrible responsibilities of his
position.
The following day, the 25th of August, being the
feast of St. Louis, Madame de Staël was obliged to go
to Versailles. She was so excited that in returning
through the Bois de Boulogne she fancied she should
be attacked by robbers. It seemed as if Fate must
punish her for being so happy. "It is true that no
robbers appeared," she writes in the Considérations,
"but the future fully justified my fears."
The following day had a sobering influence. She
was received by the queen at the same time as a niece
of Brienne's, and clearly saw by the difference made
between them that, although Necker had become
necessary, the queen's personal sympathies remained
with his predecessor. Madame de Staël made no
mistake as to the extent of this feeling, and she adds
that Necker's efforts at conciliation made no differ-
* Idem, 28. Sainte-Beuve, Causeries de Lundi, xii. 386.
270
MADAME DE STAËL.
ence, and that it remained one of the great difficulties
of his second administration.*
There are several assertions as to his own grasp of
the situation. When the nomination of the arch-
bishop of Toulouse was announced to him he said to
his daughter that the situation which was then suffi-
ciently difficult would soon become unbearable.
After he had taken Brienne's place he could not
refrain from exclaiming that it was now too late, why
had he not been granted the fifteen months the arch-
bishop of Toulouse had had? But he comforted
the king with the assurance that, although the evil
was certainly great, the resources of the nation were
still greater. Before he had been three days in office
the first disturbance took place in Paris, and Brienne
was burnt in effigy by the people. The commanding
officer of the watch interfered, and, unable to secure
obedience, he allowed the crowd to be bayoneted.
Two or three men were killed and many wounded
before the crowd could be dispersed.
Filled with anger and bitterness the populace again
assembled on the following day, attacked the watch
at several different points, burnt down ten or twelve
dwelling-houses, and killed several soldiers. The
tumult had to be quelled by the troops and Paris was
in a state of siege.‡
* Madame de Staël, Considérations sur la Révolution Française,
xii. 164, 166.
Idem, ii. 160.
Jefferson, Works and Correspondance, ii. 471.
NECKER'S ADMINISTRATION OF FINANCE.
271
For the first time in his administration the streets
of the capital were dyed with blood. Meanwhile the
money-market greeted Necker's return to office with
a rise, which, although it did not reach the 30 per
cent. given by Madame de Staël,* was nevertheless
sufficiently considerable to restore confidence, to
enable the minister to cancel the conditions of the
edict of August 16th, and to make it possible again
to pay all demands in cash. Great financial houses
made overtures; one province (Languedoc) started a
loan of 12 millions; every means employed in bank-
ing transactions were set in motion. In his history
of Necker's second financial administration, Leser
comes to the conclusion that the former certainly
employed means of a doubtful sort to bring money
into the treasury, but that he never endangered the
public confidence which lent him the support so
necessary to him. He directed every effort to carry
on the business of the State by a series of financial
operations until the "General Estates" should assem-
ble, and to shield the Government from the dangerous
humiliation of having to appear before them in a
state of financial depression.
Droz, the historian of Louis XVI., considers it
wonderful that Necker should have been able to
resume payment and to refill the treasury, which at
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, etc. Euvres, xii. 158. Leser,
Necker's Second Administration, 33, and note.
† Leser, Necker's Second Administration, 33-41.
272
MADAME DE STAËL.
the time of Brienne's retirement only contained five
hundred thousand livres ; * and this notwithstanding
the fact that the struggle against famine and the sale
of corn had alone swallowed up seventy millions in
the winter of 1789. He not only considers Necker's
second administration to have been of far more import-
ance than the first, but adds, that it was free from
any trace of the charlatanism that was sometimes
apparent in the former.t
A thorough alteration of the whole system would
be impossible once the États Généraux were re-
established unless these gave their co-operation, and
until that happened it was necessary to keep France
from dissolution. When the États Généraux assem-
bled he found that they would give no heed to ques-
tions of administration, but gave themselves up
entirely to politics. He writes, Il fallut continuer
la manœuvre.§
Necker set greater store on the fact that he was
able to avert famine during the winter and spring of
1789 in the capital and in various provinces than on
his activity in financial matters, and he called the
provisioning of Paris his greatest work.||
After ten years of bad harvests there now followed
catastrophes of every kind; prices went up, and the
* Necker, De l'Administration de M. Necker. Euvres, vi. 25.
† Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. ii. 94, 95.
‡ Henri Martin, Histoire de France, xvi. 615.
§ Necker, De l'Administration de Monsieur Necker, vi. 25.
|| Idem, vi. 298, etc.
THE VICTUALLING OF FRANCE, WINTER OF 1788-9. 273
coldest winter that could be recollected in France
since 1709 set in. As a consequence of this 40,000
labourers in Normandy alone were without food and
occupation.*
From every quarter of France impoverished home-
less wanderers came to Paris, in vain seeking relief
from the misery that had overtaken them, and steadily
adding to the crowd of malcontents who only awaited
a sign to become more desperate.
The Government, on its side, had, beyond every-
thing, to import a supply of corn to nourish these
famished crowds; for bread had become so costly
that even those invited to dine in wealthy houses
were obliged to bring it in their pockets with them,
and finally all festivities were given up that the
poor might be warmed and nourished, and fires kept
burning for them at every point in the capital where
the streets crossed.†
Necker's earlier views upon free trade in corn had
gone through no alteration: according to his own
saying "they were of the simplest, and yet restricted
by the necessity of accommodating them to circum-
stances." When he ascertained that there had been
a failure of the crops for that year he stopped the
free export of corn (on the 7th September, 1788)
that had been granted since June, 1788, for an inde-
* Jefferson, Autobiography, Complete Works, i. Correspondence,
iii. 40.
† Idem, ii. 591. Letter of March 11, 1789.
De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même. Euvres, vi. 298.
VOL. I.
T
274
MADAME DE STAËL.
finite period, and strenuously endeavoured to import
grain, especially from America.
He next organised the purchase of corn on a large
scale in foreign lands, which resulted in crippling
the activity of private firms. These knew to their
cost that they could not rival the State without severe
loss, as the latter brought its corn direct to the
market, and in the worst times could sell it cheaper
than it had bought it. Still more severely felt was
the prohibition to buy corn except in the market.
Necker hoped by this means to put a stop to usury.
His regulations in this direction had not merely
an economical but a far-reaching moral effect, as the
people now saw themselves as it were officially
strengthened in the distrust with which they had
habitually viewed the corn-dealers in bad times.
Deeds of violence were perpetrated in every part
of the country, which accustomed the masses to
uproar and encouraged the spread of anarchy.*
The winter of 1788-1789 witnessed the first Jac-
querie in Provence, when the Government practically
allowed the people to go unpunished for freeing the
prisoners, refusing to pay the taxes, settling the price
of food, and declining to receive the king's envoys.
But even such toleration, almost reaching self-
effacement, could not secure peace or provisions for
France. To meet the growing distress, Necker, as
Taine, Les Origines de la France Contemporaine, ii. La Révolution,
chapter i.: “L'anarchie spontanée.”
NECKER'S CONCILIATORY POLICY.
275
on a former occasion, again renounced the 220,000
francs to which he was entitled for his salary, and
lent the sum of 2,400,000 livres out of his private
fortune, at five per cent. interest, to buy corn, re-
marking that when peace and comfort were in ques-
tion it was worth risking a fortune.*
The responsibility he had undertaken nevertheless
exceeded his strength; he certainly provided for the
population of Paris, numbering six hundred thousand
souls, but only by artificially occupying for twelve
thousand of the unemployed and by neglecting the
provinces, whose cry for help only too often obtruded
itself in vain upon the ear of the overburdened
minister.+
The history of the Revolution tells us that it was
hunger that taught the principles of the Social Con-
tract to the masses.
This effort to replace the working of independent
influences by the energy of the state was the last that
Necker attempted as administrator under the old
monarchy. A still more severe trial awaited the
statesman.
Necker's endeavours as minister were in favour of
a moderate and conciliatory policy. The Breton
nobility were released from the bastille and d'Espré-
mésnil from his prison on the Isle of Sainte Marguerite.
He reconciled the Parlements by inducing the king
* De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même. Euvres complètes,
vi. Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 245, 313.
† Leser, Necker's Second Administration, 45, 54.
T 2
276
MADAME DE STAËL.
to replace Lamoignon by Barantin as keeper of the
seals, and also by enforcing the reforms instituted by
Malesherbes. He then gave these assemblies their
legal vacation before they could again raise the old
subjects of quarrel, but promised that the estates
should reassemble in the following January.
By this means he intended promptly to allay the
excitement in every part of the nation, which excite-
ment had been brought to the highest pitch through
a last mistake committed by his predecessor. For,
on realizing that none of the existing parties were to
be won over by his promise to summon the Etats
Généraux, Brienne had conceived the notion of once
again securing his position by means of the existing
discord. A decree issued on the 5th of July declared
that it had not been possible for the Government to
find out the general opinion as to the mode of election
and the composition of the "States," and that there-
fore by the king's desire not only every corporate
body in the kingdom but every well-educated in-
dividual was invited to give an opinion and to discuss
the matter. The minister hoped amidst all the
opposing opinions and interests he might easily obtain
support from the strongest party.
What would have been the wisest course of states-
manship, with certain fixed instructions, became in
this way a subject of quarrel and the sport of chance.
Throughout the land, high and low, young and old,
the wise and the ignorant, statesmen and women,
sincere enthusiasts and bold intriguers, true patriots
THE FRENCH SEEK A CONSTITUTION.
277
and greedy adventurers, started, like the Argonauts
of old, in search of the fleece, or of this lost constitu-
tion, which grew in importance in proportion to the
impossibility of finding it, for like all the institutions
of the old monarchy it had been altered in some par-
ticulars, whilst in others it had never been submitted
to definite rules. Thus, deputies had never been
elected in the early days, but the entire nobility and
clergy appeared at the assemblies of the nation; and
towards the end of the fifteenth century the clergy,
nobility, and citizens in each official circle, under a
bailli or a seneschal, elected their deputies.
In the same way the number of representatives
allowed to the Tiers Etat was quite indefinite.* The
first to be sent forth by Brienne to explore this wide
ocean was the Abbé Maury; he returned, owning to
having seen no land. But Malesherbes, on the other
hand, who had been one of the first to demand the
Etats Généraux, at a time when authority seemed
still to repose in the hands of the Government, re-
nounced popularity to warn the king in a memorial,
dated July 1788, of the danger of bringing the three
orders together under altered conditions with sym-
pathies so opposed to each other.
He went back rather to the project, formed by his
friend Turgot, of one assembly only, similar to the
provincial assemblies, and composed of elected mem-·
bers belonging to the proprietary classes.
* Leser, Necker's Second Administration, 64.
278
MADAME DE STAËL.
He specially implored the king to permit no equi-
vocation on the part of his minister and to allow no
diminution of confidence in the sincerity of his inten-
tions; "for," he ended, "the results of general dis-
content are incalculable." Dufresne Saint Léon ex-
pressed himself in a similar sense to Brienne. The
advice was excellent, but it came years too late, and
only gained the useless support of a few sensible men
for whom there was no place or hearing in the Revo-
lution. "It is no question of what was but of what
is to be," said Mirabeau.*
The Parlements answered characteristically. They
demanded the calling together of the Etats Généraux
according to the laws set down in 1614, and that the
vote should be taken by orders in direct opposition to
the wish of the Tiers.
This was the last blow to the claim of these bodies
to represent the national wishes, and they vanished
from the political scene of action beneath a storm of
attacks on the part of the press and of literature.
Whilst the storm Brienne had provoked continued
unabated in the provincial assemblies, pamphlets and
periodicals, reckoned at three thousand in the ten
months between July 1788 and 1789, occupied them-
selves with the solution of the same problem.†
When the Comte de Ségur returned to Paris, after
fulfilling a diplomatic mission of some years' duration,
* Henri Martin, Histoire de France, xvi. 617, note.
† Larcy, Louis XVI. et les Successeurs de Turgot, xxxi. 650.
MADAME DE STAËL.
279
he could not restrain his astonishment at the social
change he perceived. The polished wit, the familiar
intercourse, and the thoughtful moderation of olden
days, were no longer to be found. Political passion
had changed the salon into the arena, everyone tried
to speak louder than his neighbour, and no one lis-
tened.
He adds, "The women did the same, and among
the remarkable and attractive members of the young
generation the Baronne de Staël in particular betrayed
such especial pungency of argument and eloquence
that very few could enter the lists against her, as she
not only surprised but convinced and carried away
her hearers."* The want felt by Ségur did not exist
for Madame de Staël, who was too young to feel the
difference which even in social relations marked the
change from the domain of theory to the region of fact.
Whatever might happen in the future, the present
fulfilled her wildest dreams. Her father was at the
head of the State, and the whole nation shared her
enthusiastic love for him. Everywhere his name fell
on her ear, and his picture met her gaze; the highest
aims of existence, the happiness of the people, aspira-
tions for liberty and for the future, were mingled with
her deepest and holiest affections. All this came to
her at the right moment, in the spring-time of her life
and in the full strength of her four-and-twenty years.
The muses beckoned to her, and crowned her youth-
*Comte de Ségur.
280
MADAME DE STAËL.
ful tresses with those garlands so often reserved for
brows grown cold.
As we have already mentioned, in Talleyrand's
opinion the highest point of social enjoyment was
reached during the years immediately preceding the
Revolution. The year 1789 represented this for
Madame de Staël; she says that never had so many
clever intellectual people come to the front. Society
had never been more brilliant or more earnest in tone.
than it was during the three or four years from 1788
to 1791, and in no country or period had the art of
conversation come to greater perfection.*
. Active and eager to join in the fray, she thus stepped
into the place she had long been destined to fill. Cir-
cumstances had modified the political doctrines of
Madame de Staël; the time we now speak of had
nothing or very little to do with the great constitu-
tional theories of Les Considérations. The woman
who lived through the Revolution was not the same
as she who related its story, and the mature experi-
ence of 1816 spoke a different language to that of
the youthful enthusiasm of 1789. But, however much
her experiences might and did influence her tone of
thought, her sympathies remained the same. They
belonged at that time and subsequently to that group
of the nobility for whom she invariably claimed the
honour and glory of having initiated the Revolution.†
To her high conception of liberty Madame de Staël
Madame de Staël, Considérations. Euvres complètes, xii. 385.
† Idem, xii. 54, 132.
HER OPINION UPON FRENCH HISTORY.
281
linked the conviction that a revolution in its favour
could only succeed if the impulse came from above,
and if the noblest and best came to its assistance.
The great aspiration of all those inclined to reform,
from Vauban and Fénélon to Turgot, had always been
to make the crown responsible for reform, and not to
call the national assembly together until a monarchy
freed from the shackles of despotic power could be
brought to meet it. The younger generation, and
among them Madame de Staël, tried to solve the
problem of the future by applying to the next grade
in the social hierarchy. If the king could not be won
over then the nobility must take the lead, that liberal
youth of 1789, who, as Rénan says, created the con-
ception of a Fatherland--the Clermont-Tonnerres,
Lally-Tollendals, Crillons, Castellanes, La Rouche-
foucaulds, Toulongeons, La Fayettes, Montmorencies,
whose unselfish devotion could never be outstripped
by the men belonging to the Tiers, as Madame de
Staël, agreeing with Sièyes, wrote at a later date.*
Her whole conception of French history and her pre-
ference for English institutions is formed on her appre-
ciation of the importance and the responsibilities of a
strong, independent, intellectual, and politically-power-
ful aristocracy. In her eyes Richelieu was the evil spirit
of the nation, as he lowered the aristocracy and turned
the greatest vassals of the crown into mere courtiers.
* Madame de Staël, Considérations. Euvres complètes, xii. 351.
Sièyes in A. Chérest, ii. 255.
282
MADAME DE STAËL.
She made his despotism answerable for the destruction
of originality and loyalty in the French character,
and went the length of calling the great minister a
foreigner in France.* It is almost comical to see her
defending her father from the imputation of resem-
bling Richelieu as if it were the most serious re-
proach.† Whilst the only statesman of the first
phase of the Revolution invited the minister to under-
take the general salvation,‡ Necker almost simul-
taneously and in the full consciousness of moral
superiority explained to the king, during a conversa-
tion regarding the situation, that if ever the course of
events required a Richelieu or a Mazarin he would no
longer be suitable as minister.§ Madame de Staël's
opinion of Louis XVI. and the French monarchy
betrays the same views. She answered the great
question of the day-whether a constitution really
existed by asserting that the Government was
carried on partly according to old customs and
usages, partly according to fancy, but never by fixed
laws. The nominal constitution of the nation only
reposed in the hereditary power of the king, its his-
tory was made up of the incessant struggles of the
—
* Madame de Staël, Euvres complètes, xii. 36-38.
† Madame de Staël, Du Caractère de M. Necker, et de sa Vie Privee.
Euvres complètes, xvii. 40.
Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 350. Letter
of May, 1780.
§ De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même. Euvres com-
plètes, vi. 183.
HER OPINIONS UPON FRENCH HISTORY.
283
nation to secure its rights and of the nobles to secure
their privileges, whilst their kings introduced abso-
lute powers.
The dreadful danger to which an order is exposed
whilst occupying a prominent position, and the
amount of jealousy it excites after all power has for-
saken it, had not escaped Madame de Staël. She never
doubted that the French nobility must sacrifice some
privileges, but considered that this should be equal-
ised by a revival of political power; to attain it
she reckoned not on the lesser nobility, which had
obtained its titles, patents, pensions, and tithes, by
gold or servility, and thereby had lost its whole
significance, but on the ancient historical races pos-
sessing the old vitality necessary to the patricians of
a great nation, on the lines of the English aris-
tocracy, independent of empty class prejudices and
injurious prerogatives, and willingly opening its
ranks to merit of every description.† The same
sentiment which induced her to glorify resistance to
the despotism of the throne in the seventeenth cen-
tury, induced her to excuse what she would otherwise
never have forgiven, and what she more than once
forgot when Mirabeau was in question-the fact that
she was speaking of her father's most energetic oppo-
nent. There can be no doubt that if Madame de
Staël had not been Necker's daughter she would have
* Madame de Staël, Considérations. Euvres complètes, xii. 147-151.
† Idem, xii. 171, 190, 201.
‡ Idem.
284
MADAME DE STAËL.
associated herself with one who, more than any other,
represented the genius of the Revolution, as it was
understood by Madame de Staël in 1789. So long
as Mirabeau lived her eyes remained upraised upon
his Titan form, and her every nerve receptive for his
electric words. She explained her admiring approval
of her father's political attitude by the sophism that,
as far as a statesman could, he desired the same thing
as the aristocratic tribune of the people. And what
did Necker really desire? In neither of the books
he wrote during the long period of rest between his
two administrations is there any information to be
gained on this point. The book on financial adminis-
tration showed an early admiration and preference
for English institutions, without contributing any-
thing new on the subject or adapting these institu-
tions to French requirements.* The work on the
importance of religious belief bore witness to the
frightful social danger of an advance of irreligion,
and received the Academy prize at the very time
when its author was recalled to office. But however
honourable it may have been to the thinker and the
Christian to have occupied himself with these ques-
tions at such a time, as a statesman he could not
have done so had the question of reconstructing the
monarchy entirely absorbed him. Only his later
writings are taken up by the political system which,
as minister, he ought to have carried out. His will
* Necker, Euvres complètes, v. 598.
† Idem.
•
WHAT DID NECKER WISH?
285
ingness to give up his former opposition to calling
together the states did not originate from any altera-
tion in his convictions. Later on he repeated that
the commotion which led to the promise given by
the Government to assemble the states, and the impa-
tience with which the nation demanded the fulfilment
of obligations, were the cause of all the subsequent
troubles. "The deputies," he says, "met together
without having had time to prepare themselves for
such an important step." ""* "Why should I conceal
the fact that from first to last I was in favour of a
government which resembled neither the Etats Géné-
raux represented by the three orders, nor any other
institution of the old monarchy."+ His favourite
system of government was the constitutional, accord-
ing to the English model, and supported by a strong,
powerful, and influential aristocracy, without which
even Necker thought a moderate monarchy impos-
sible. A military aristocracy seemed dangerous to
him, a financial aristocracy too liable to variations ;
he desired to see an hereditary nobility and the
country represented by two chambers, predicting that
from the moment this did not succeed the demand
for equality would exceed the conception of liberty.‡
Later events have entirely justified these anticipa-
tions. Unfortunately Necker did nothing to carry
* Necker, De la Révolution Française, 1796. Euvres complètes,
ix. 126,128, 145.
† Idem, ix. 131.
Necker, Dernières vues de Politique et de Finance, 1802. Euvres
complètes, xi. 240.
286
MADAME DE STAËL.
them out, although he indicates the moment when if
there had been an energetic king, before the assem-
bling of the States-General, the question might have
been decided in this sense.*
The king emphatically shared the antipathy felt
by his whole family for English institutions, although
he did not carry it to such a pitch as his brother
the Comte d'Artois, who even after the restoration
declared that he would prefer to chop wood rather
than reign subject to the conditions of an English
monarchy. But there were other means such as the
Etats Généraux themselves, or Necker's own rein-
statement, to which Louis XVI. had assented much
against his will; certainly a minister who undertook
a bankrupt state had good right to bring forward
a programme and have an opinion. That he did
not so much as attempt this may be attributed
more to Necker's own disposition than to outward
circumstances. He himself says he was undecided
and prone to reflection. Madame de Staël had the
same opinion of him, and says his character and tone
of mind led him to await events instead of precipi-
tating them by any decision of his own. Reflection
had the same power over him as passion had over
others; the working of his intellect, and his lively
imagination, sometimes placed him in a state of piti-
* Necker, Dernières vues de Politique et de Finance, 1802. Euvres
complètes, xi. 132.
† Necker, De la Révolution Française, 1796, ix. 132.
‡ De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même. Œuvres com-
plètes, vi. 88.
WHAT DID NECKER DESIRE?
287
able indecision. He often reproached himself bitterly
and unjustifiably on this account. Madame de Staël is
quite consistent when she adds that "only against his
own will, and when forced by circumstances, had
Necker lent a hand to any alteration in the political
organization of France." * Her description of his
mode of operation is perfectly accurate. When he
took office he lost no opportunity of recalling the fact
that he had found the king and his advisers pledged to
fulfil the promises and the hopes they had awakened,†
but he also indicated the responsibility he had him-
self incurred, as it was now his duty not only to
consult the wish of the nation but to guard the king's
authority. The questions which pressed for discussion
concerned the total number of deputies to be elected
both in the whole assembly as well as in each of the
three orders; the extent of the districts into which
the electors were to be divided, the mode and style
whereby the elections should be conducted, the right
and privilege of voting for dismissing that assembly,
in which according to ancient custom the electors
made known their wishes to the deputies.‡
On one
of these points Necker's personal views were quite
decided. He desired a double representation of the
Tiers, and, as Madame de Staël expresses it, he could
* Madame de Staël, Considérations. Euvres complètes, xii. 66-67,
69-70. Du Caractère de M. Necker. Euvres compiètes, xvi. 39.
† Necker, De la Révolution Française, 1796. Euvres complètes,
x. 58. Madame de Staël, Du Caractère de M. Necker, etc. xvii. 41.
‡ Leser, Necker's Second Ministry, 71. After the Procès verbal
de l'assemblée des notables tenue a Versailles en l'année 1788, 74-79.
288
MADAME DE STAËL.
not see "how the king was to avoid the imputation of
injustice and the danger of unpopularity if he refused
it."*
He had not so entirely made up his mind as to
whether the right of election should (as Turgot
desired) be decided by settled conditions of property.
and income. When he first left office he declared
this to be absolutely necessary,† but in a later pam-
phlet he concluded that it was not possible to carry
it
out in France owing to the existing mode of taxation,
that it would moreover exclude the poor clergy who
possessed nothing, and many of the most capable
members of the Tiers, who by the humiliating con-
dition of paying the Taille were prevented from
acquiring land. Neither as minister did he bring
French conditions more into accord with his political
ideal of the English constitution, but he fell upon the
unlucky expedient of calling together an assembly of
notables a second time and left them to fix all the
laws of election. Even Madame de Staël could not
defend this step of her father's, and according to
Thiers it was calculated to destroy all regard for the
throne as far as the two first orders were con-
cerned, § an accusation which the Extreme Right
* Madame de Staël, Du Caractère de M. Necker. Euvres complètes,
xviii. 41.
† Necker, Du pouvoir executif dans les grands Etats, 1792. Euvres
complètes, viii. 578.
‡ Necker, De la Révolution Française, 1796. EŒuvres complètes, ix.
87-89.
§ Madame de Staël, Considérations. Euvres complètes, xii. 178.
Thiers, Histoire de la Révolution Française, i. 17. Edition de Bruxelles,
1838.
THE NOTABLES SUMMONED A SECOND TIME.
289
has never ceased to bring against Necker. The
accusation is not justified even by the fact that the
calculation of the minister proved fallacious. The
king, indeed, in giving his consent to summoning the
notables, had stipulated that their councils should in
no way be influenced. "This recommendation on
the part of the monarch," says Necker, "seemed quite
favourable to his interests." It gave time to study
the progress of public opinion, and whilst the king's
advisers let the notables set independently to work,
they gave the king a chance of doing a little more
than these latter would have done in favour of the
Tiers.* In other words, Necker wished to gain time
and secure his popularity without alienating the two
first orders who were essential to the foundation of
the political structure he had in view.
Under these conditions the notables assembled to-
gether for the second time on the 6th Nov. 1788;
and instead of Barentin, the keeper of the Seal,
Necker, who had emphatically reserved this right to
himself,† laid before them the result of the investi-
gations instituted by the Government on the con-
stitution of the States-General, and invited them to
consider whether they would maintain the old tra-
ditions unaltered, or take the requirements of the
situation into account in pursuance of the king's wish.
They were to use discretionary authority on the whole
* Necker, De la Révolution Française, 1796. Euvres, ix. 87.
† Leser, Necker's Second Administration, 63.
Autographes, 48.
Barentin, Mémoire
VOL, I.
U
290
MADAME DE STAËL.
subject of the laws of election. The notables were as
much pledged as Necker to the important question of
double representation for the Third Estate, as they
had already conceded it in the previous year to the
provincial assemblies. Since that date the question
had, however, been treated by numberless pamphlets
and disquisitions of every kind, as an unqualified
demand on the part of the Tiers, and as a weapon of
attack against the two other orders. In the face of
this growing danger, all the notables in their several
bureaux (with the exception of that presided over by
the Comte de Provence) declared against the double
representation of the Tiers, and in this way denied
their moral support to Necker as they had denied
pecuniary assistance to Brienne. Thus their sittings
came to an end on the 12th Dec. 1787. They had
already been popularly and wittily designated as the
"Not-ables" by the English.* Necker himself admits
that he both expected, and was glad to have, the
decision left in his own hands. He was indeed still
very undecided, and, according to Malouet, he yielded
reluctantly and only under the influence of the public
opinion, which never failed to move him.† In the
end he decided in the king's name on all that the
notables had left unaccomplished. The double repre-
sentation of the Tiers was now assured, but it did
not occur to Necker that he thoroughly discredited
* Lord Auckland, Journal and Correspondence, i. 249.
† Malouet, Mémoires, i. 249. Necker, De la Révolution Française.
Euvres, ix. 97.
THE MINISTERIAL COUNCIL OF DEC. 27, 1788. 291
the two superior orders, which were already attacked
from every quarter, when he called them together,
consulted them, and then dismissed them, with the
determination to do exactly the reverse of what
they had counselled in their overwhelming majority.
Meanwhile much time was lost, and the assembly of
the States, promised for January, had again to be put
off. Necker took the whole responsibility of deciding
the conditions of voting, and of the numbers to repre-
sent the Tiers. His projects were first laid before
the king, and then ratified by the ministerial council
Dec. 27, 1788. Mercy tells us that Madame Necker
assured him, "as the confidant of her husband's
inmost thoughts," that he had decided on resigning
should the king not yield; for, in the event of the
Tiers being sacrificed, he saw no further chance of
avoiding civil war. Should his wishes be gratified
it might be possible for him later on to assure the
importance and splendour of the other two orders.*
Later on Necker characteristically agreed that it would
be inaccurate to call this arrangement a double repre-
sentation, un doublement du Tiers; he explained that
noblemen and priests could be elected in the third
order, whereas the unprivileged could represent no
other order than their own; added to this the number
of votes in the States-General were not nearly so im-
portant to the Government as the number of followers
* Wertheimer, Documents Inédits relatifs à Marie Antoinette. Revue
Historique, 1884, ii. 327. Mercy au Kaunitz, 6 Jan. 1789.
U 2
292
MADAME DE STAËL.
it possessed throughout the nation.* The parish priests
had been the most trustworthy and faithful of its
adherents, and Necker had distinguished them as the
chosen representatives of the poor. With the consent
of the notables he had called upon them as electors to
join in the assembly of the clergy, and had expected
their support. But on this most weighty point in
the history of the Revolution, Necker's expectations
were again to be deceived. The parochial clergy, so
long neglected and debarred from filling any respon-
sible position, declined to lend its interest to the high
dignitaries of the Church, who had hitherto been
deaf to their prayers and representations. The one
hundred and eighty-seven vicars who joined the
Tiers on the 9th of June, 1789, turned the scale in
its favour; contrary therefore to Necker's anticipation
the first two orders did not acquire adherents from
the Tiers, but the latter attracted the opposition
element to swell its ranks. To this mistaken calcu-
lation was added another portentous mistake.
virtue of the decisions of the 27th Dec. Necker believed
that he had granted all the conditions of constitu-
tional freedom, § whilst in reality the most important
In
* Necker, De la Révolution Française, 1796. Œuvres, ix. 64, 97,
and 99.
† Idem, ix. 97 and 162.
‡ Malouet, Mémoires, i. 279. Niebuhr, Geschichte des Zeitalters
der Révolution, i. 170-171. Bernhardi, Geschichte Russlands, ii. 173.
Taine, Origines de la France Contemporaine. La Révolution, i. 11.
Chérest, La chute de l'Ancien Régime, ii. 255.
§ De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même, 1791. Euvres
complètes, vi. 207.
•
ITS RESULTS.
293
questions were left to be decided by the States-
General. As Madame de Staël rightly observes, the
double representation of the third order should have
resulted in a division of the national representatives
into two Chambers, and all her father's later works
proved that he had this end in view when he insti-
tuted it.* The decision of the ministerial council,
on the 27th December, was only a first step
towards this. The Tiers could not remain satisfied
with the concession offered; if the votes were to be
taken by orders there could be no real concession,
for it would thus return to the old position of one
vote against two. If the Tiers were to obtain any
political mastery it must, as it did in fact later on,
establish voting by head. If, in fulfilment of Necker's
aspirations, the political balance were on the con-
trary to be established in a moderate monarchy, the
national representatives must necessarily sit in two
Chambers. This could only be accomplished were
the minister to succeed in finding supporters, pre-
pared to carry the measure at the right moment.
There was no time to lose. The demand for repre-
sentation in one single assembly daily acquired force,†
and there could remain no further doubt as to the
answer to be given by the great majority of the
* Madame de Staël, Considérations. Euvres complètes, xii. 179.
Necker, De la Révolution Française. Euvres, xi. 73. Malouet,
Mémoires, i. 279.
† Leser, Necker's Second Administration, 107, note. Considérations
intéressantes sur les affaires présentes. Août, 1788.
294
MADAME DE STAËL.
national representatives when the minister came to
put the question before them. There was, moreover, no
lack of men such as Necker required to carry out
his ideas. Mallet du Pan, Malouet, the archbishop
of Bordeaux, and the bishop of Langres, Mounier,
the young Barnave, Lally de Tollendal, were among
the most distinguished of Necker's adherents. How-
ever much their views might differ on weighty matters
or might still remain undecided, they were all con-
vinced that it was no longer possible to restore the
old system, and that reform must be carried out by
means of the monarchy. They would have formed
Necker's party if he had at all recognised the
necessity of governing with the support of party.
The chagrin of finding that he was incapable of being
their leader first turned such men as Rivarol and
Mallet du Pan into his personal opponents. The
year which he had allowed to slip by was drawing
to a close when a last offer of this kind was made
to him by the numerous followers of the Comte
Mirabeau. The memorable letter written by the
latter to Montmorin bears the date of Dec. 28, 1788,
and contains the following sentences: "As a citizen,
I tremble for the royal power, which never was
more essential than it is at this moment, when it is
approaching its ruin . . . . Has the ministry (which
is hastening into a most serious position, by putting
off the Estates-General, instead of preparing for them)
has it thought of a means of counteracting their
power, or still more of gaining their support? Has
MIRABEAU.
295
it a definitely determined line of action, which can
only be approved of by the nation? I hold that it
is to be found in a constitution that would save us
from the plots of the aristocracy, the encroachments
of the democracy, and from boundless anarchy.
Anarchy, into which authority has fallen in our land,
because it claimed to be unrestricted.” *
The extraordinary strength felt by the writer in
itself explained his words, and guaranteed a hearing
for them. Mirabeau was then forty years old; all
France talked of his youthful irregularities; the
terrible quarrels with his father in early manhood,
with his wife, and with his sisters; his year's impri-
sonment in Vincennes, whence he returned to society
with undiminished energy, but in open hostility to
all the ties he had outraged.
Then followed the stay in England, the publica-
tion of political pamphlets, their condemnation by the
parlement, a first journey to Germany, the meeting
with the great Frederick. The year 1785 saw his
first connection with Calonne. The works on finance,
which terminated in 1787 with the attack on Necker
and. Calonne, because the latter had not prevented
the condemnation of his political works by the parle-
ment.+ During that time the mission to Berlin
suggested by Talleyrand took place. It combined
* Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 340, 341.
† Mirabeau, Essai sur le Despotisme, 1776. Considérations sur
l'ordre de Cincinnatus, 1784. Essai sur les lettres de cachet et les
prisons d'Etat, 1782.
296
MADAME DE STAËL.
the purpose of sending Mirabeau away from Paris,
and of watching King Frederick in his last moments;
under those circumstances the work on the Prussian
monarchy * was written, and the secret correspond-
ence with Vergennes most unjustifiably published to
relieve himself from pressing monetary embarrass-
ment. +
.
From 1788 Mirabeau could not longer remain away
from Paris. He felt that his hour had come.
Although he was still an object of suspicion and
curiosity to the public, an outcast from society, in
politics an adventurer, he was part of that element
which stirs up and constitutes revolution when
nothing more can be gained from social order. As
he first appeared, "great but tarnished in reputa-
tion," Madame de Staël describes him as one who
knew everything, and foresaw everything'; calculated
on his eloquence to obtain that foremost position of
which his want of principle had deprived him; one
who possessed a far reaching mind and restless
energy; ready to force his way into the Parisian
salons by setting a whole section of society on fire.
Before accomplishing this Herostratus-like feat,
Mirabeau sought rehabilitation.
His letter to Montmorin announced at what price
* Mirabeau, De la Monarchie Prussienne, 1788.
+ Mirabeau, Histoire secrète de la Cour de Berlin, 1788, and Bacourt
on the subject, Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i.
343-346.
Translator's note: Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Diana
at Ephesus in order to get his name talked about.
:
MIRABEAU'S PLAN.
297
his writings previous to the Revolution favoured the
principles of a moderate monarchy, and amidst the
general disorder he alone kept them clearly in view.*
Necker's friends in vain looked for a similar manifes-
tation from him; it came too late when four years
afterwards he published his best work-called by
Madame de Staël, his "Social Gospel." +
It would thwart the aims of democracy were it
unable to prove that Mirabeau represented its doc-
trines: its historians therefore make light of Montes-
quieu's influence upon him, and emphasise that of
Rousseau; they cast doubts upon his preference for
English institutions; and as he never deviated from
his outspoken monarchical sympathies, they endea-
vour to describe a démocratie royale as his prin-
cipal object. This assertion is based upon Mirabeau's
hatred for the nobility of the ancien régime, with
whom a personal reconciliation was no longer possible.
He soon saw that it could never as an order adapt
itself to a constitutional monarchy. But the testimony
of all Mirabeau's most intimate contemporaries, and
his own calmer statements, refute this, as well as
his plans and his mode of conduct in the latter
days of his life. According to Dumont he wished
for a constitution similar to the English, but adapted
to French requirements. When, on the contrary,
the Tiers constituted itself a national assembly he
*Lanfrey, Essai sur la Révolution Française, 126.
† Madame de Staël, Considérations.
pouvoir exécutif dans les Grands États.
Euvres, xiii. 18. Necker, Du
Euvres, viii.
298
MADAME DE STAËL.
A
indicated this step as the cause of every subsequent
disaster, and spoke the well-known words, "They
wanted to rule the king instead of ruling through
him."* De la Marck emphatically points to his
exclusion by the Provençal nobility as the turning
point explaining his subsequent action, "for," he
adds, "his disposition and principles showed him to
be an aristocrat, an admirer of the existing state of
things in England, where a powerful, wise, and
moderate aristocracy is a link between the monarchy
and the people, and combines all the important
elements to be found in either."
Madame de Staël held the same opinion of him.
"He was too superior not to be aware of the impos-
sibility of a democracy for France. But even had
such been possible he would have had no taste for
it." ‡
"Aristocrat by inclination; tribune by calcula-
tion," Necker says of him.
In one of the first and most uncompromising of his
writings, Mirabeau would not even allow that the
burdens of feudalism should be removed without
equivalent compensation. He had no notion of
giving in to the general outcry. He required the
guarantees afforded by property in return for any
* Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, 218, 219, and 268. Mirabeau,
Lettres à Mauvillon, 468.
† Correspondance entre Mirabeau et le Comte de la Marck, i. 109,
110. Malouet, Mémoires, ii. 13.
Madame de Staël, Considérations. Euvres complètes, xii. 262, 263.
MIRABEAU'S PLAN.
299
participation in public affairs,* and rejected the
appeal to the people "which would reduce the law-
givers to slaves," as well as Rousseau's idea that
the people should rule for themselves. On the other
hand, Mirabeau held fast to Montesquieu's notion of
the division of power, and sacrificed the system of
the two Chambers only when the Tiers became the
sole alternative to no government at all. Thiers
owns that Mirabeau did not act from conviction in
this matter, but on compulsion, ‡ and Henri Martin
reproaches him for the indecision he showed in this
change of front. §
These views lay at the root of Mirabeau's plans
at the beginning of 1789; Necker coincided with
them all, but could not reconcile himself to their
originator. He had always held that it was, if possi-
ble, more important to follow the moral laws in public
than in private life. Faith in the triumph of reason
and justice, and purity of intention, were worth more
to him than cleverness or foresight.¶
'Morality is essential in all things," he used to say.
* Mirabeau, Essai sur le Despotisme. Essai sur les lettres de cachet
et les prisons d'État, 1782. Henri Martin, Histoire de France, xvi.
535, &c.
† Decrue, Les Idées Politiques de Mirabeau. Revue Historique,
Mai, Juin, 1883, 43, 337, 383.
Thiers, Histoire de la Révolution, i. 139.
§ Henri Martin, Histoire de France depuis 1789, i. 49.
Madame de Staël, Considérations. Euvres complètes, xii. 72.
¶ Necker, Discours à l'ouverture de l'Assemblée des Notables.
Euvres complètes, vi. 429.
300
MADAME DE STAËL.
It suited both his upright character and his vanity to
uphold it as a statesman; this in itself made reconcilia-
tion impossible with the man bearing the worst repu-
tation in the kingdom, even had Necker ignored his
personal attacks. Mirabeau himself complained that
his early irregularities were remembered against him,
but he need not, and ought not, on this account to
have been allowed to become an opponent. His
ambition and above all his monetary embarrassments
presented means for securing him. Necker did not
seize the advantage. As already remarked, he was
a keen observer of human weakness and perversity
but he did not possess that sympathy which lies at the
root of all true knowledge of human nature. Indi-
viduals are hardly ever mentioned in his numerous
writings with the exception of Montmorin, whom he
calls his friend; the chief participators in the Revolu-
tion are almost unnoticed by him; a passing allusion
to Mirabeau, Danton, or Robespierre barely recalls the
epoch in which he lived. Thus he missed the first
chance of coming to an understanding with Mirabeau.
Montmorin, who seriously entertained the idea of
waylaying Mirabeau on his road to Provence and
deporting him, wrote him an offensive letter threaten-
ing to prosecute the man who had published the
Secret History of the Court of Berlin. This letter
found the "Hercules of the Revolution," as Goethe
calls him, fighting for election in Provence, on which
occasion he proved himself to be the greatest orator
in France, and was chosen as the leader of the Tiers
•
THE ELECTIONS OF 1789.
301
as a constitutional monarchist. On the 24th of
January Necker issued the regulations for election to
the States-General, which at first were to meet on the
27th of April, but eventually were postponed to the
5th of May. It was useless to persuade the Govern-
ment to influence the elections. Louis XVI. had
forbidden his ministers to interfere with the counsels of
the notables; Necker also considered it to be immoral
to do so, and subsequently viewed the attempt to gain
over a party in the National Assembly in the same
light.
Whilst nought but the constitution was talked of,
the king and Necker alone acted constitutionally.
Thus it came to pass for the first and last time that
the entire nation-the women, including abbesses,* as
well as the men belonging to the privileged orders,
representing property-had full liberty to elect their
deputies during three months, and in hundreds of
assemblies, and further to compile the far-famed
Cahiers, in which it was formerly the custom to
collect all the grievances and wishes of the electors of
each order for their representatives.
In most of the important points, such as the cessation
of all despotism, division of power in legislation be-
tween the king and the nation, ministerial responsi-
bility, regular assemblage of the States-General, and
the provincial assemblies and reform of judicial pro-
* Laboulaye, Cours de Législation comparée. L'Assemblée con-
stituante. Revue des Cours Littéraire, vi. Année 1868-1869, 322.
302
MADAME DE STAËL.
cedure, there was no special difference to be found
between the wishes of the various orders-none that
would have prevented their coming to an understand-
ing if the establishment of liberty had really been the
general aim.† But the Tiers wanted not merely
political but social equality, and the peasants who
coveted the land were not to be satisfied by any of
the above concessions.
The Government had ample warning of what
might be expected if it did not come between the
parties as mediator, and with a settled programme.
In three provinces-Provence, Franche Comté, and
Brittany-the various orders came to open violence.
Mirabeau helped to restore order in Marseilles and
Aix, for, as Necker put it, "the Government feared
to employ force without due consideration." ‡ $
Franche Comté led the way in attacking the châteaux,
and the nobles of Brittany hesitated to choose deputies
from their midst. During the four months preceding
the taking of the Bastille three hundred risings took
place in France. The first broke out in Paris on the
28th of April, when the populace, suspecting a reduction
of wages, set fire to Reveillon's paper-factory, and in
all probability was bribed by the Duke of Orleans
* Larcy, Louis XVI. et les États Généraux. Correspondance, 1868,
505.
† Dareste, Histoire de France, vii. 149. Henri Martin, Histoire de
France, xvi. 648, 649.
‡ De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même. Euvres com-
plètes, vi. 183.
THE ELECTIONS OF 1789.
303
to do the deed.* The gardens of his Palais Royal had
become a club, where seditious speeches daily inflamed
the people, and where owing to an ancient prerog-
ative the police might not enter. Even in February
Necker acknowledged that obedience could no longer
be reckoned on, and that he was by no means sure of
the troops.
He repeated this to the king a fortnight
before the opening of the States-General, and his
fears that the king might be mistaken as to the dis-
position of the army.† Madame de Staël must have
forgotten this when in one of the most erroneous
statements contained in her Considérations she
asserts that confidence in the Government was so
strong that notwithstanding the prevailing distress
there were no disturbances in France during the
winter of 1788-1789. One of her letters, dated Jan.
21, 1789, expresses the hope that, notwithstanding the
divisions among the existing forces, constitutional
reform may be accomplished. "France," she writes.
to her Swedish correspondent-personally unknown to
her, "is on the brink of presenting a tremendous
spectacle to Europe. This in itself should awaken
ambition, but I tremble for the steersman surrounded
by such rocks." ‡
The place of meeting for the States-General was
* Taine, Origines de la France Contemporaine. La Révolution,
i. 13, 17, 18, 40. Jefferson, Complete Works. Autobiography, i. 100.
† Malouet, Mémoires, i. 287.
Unpublished Letters, Madame de Staël, in the Library at Upsala.
Madame de Staël to Nils von Rosenstein. Paris, Jan. 21, 1789.
304
MADAME DE STAËL.
still to be decided.
against Necker that in his subsequent writings he
never acknowledged himself to have been in the
wrong in any of his public transactions; he made one
exception however.* "A mistake," he writes, in
1791, ."
was never known. It lay in my advice to
the king that he should assemble the States-General
in Paris, and not at Versailles; my proposal was set
aside by his majesty himself on very sufficient
grounds." The monarch feared the Palais Royal
and the uproar in the streets, whilst the minister
feared the cabals at Versailles more than the ascend-
ancy of the capital, which, according to Madame de
Staël, he hoped to counteract by the provincial
assemblies.† In this way Louis XVI. made room for
the deputies under his own roof; the meeting-place
for the Tiers was however left to the last moment;
and this led to the allotment of a hall called the Salle
des Etats, surrounded by galleries. Malouet relates
that when the populace took advantage of these
galleries Necker conceived the notion of pulling down
the building in one night, under pretext that it was
unsafe. The walls stand to this day; it was the
monarchy of Louis XVI. that fell.
It has often been brought up
* De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même. Euvres com-
plètes, vi. 88.
† Madame de Staël, Considérations. Euvres complètes, xii. 88.
‡ Malouet, Mémoires, i. 295.
CHAPTER VI.
The États Généraux-Mirabeau and Necker-The king begs Necker
to remain in office-The Estates unite-Gouverneur Morris-
Thomas Jefferson-The Court against Necker-The king dis-
misses Necker, July 11, 1789-Impression created in Paris-
14th July-Necker returns to Paris-Letter from Madame de
Staël to Gustavus III.-La Fayette and the National Guard—
Talleyrand-The Rights of Man-The Veto-Mounier-Plans
of flight for the Royal Family-Banquet of the Gardes du Corps
at Versailles-October days.
"THOSE Who imagine the French Revolution to have
been a chance occurrence can have taken neither the
past nor the future into consideration. They have
confused the players and play, and ascribed the work
of centuries to the passion of men of the moment." *
With these words Madame de Staël begins her
memorial of the Revolution.
Madame de Staël was at the same window with
Madame de Montmorin, wife of the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, to see the procession of deputies on
the 4th of May, the day previous to the opening of
the Etats Généraux. A solemn service was to be
held, and half Paris had streamed out to Versailles.
* Madame de Staël, Considérations. Euvres complètes, xii. 1.
VOL. I.
X
306
MADAME DE STAËL.
66
gave myself up to the most sanguine anticipa-
tions," she writes, "when for the first time in France
I beheld the representatives of the nation. Madame
de Montmorin, who was by no means specially clever,
made a considerable impression upon me by emphati-
cally remarking that I had no reason to rejoice: All
this will bring great catastrophes both to France and
to us.'"
C
Madame de Staël further adds; "This unfortunate
woman died on the scaffold, with one of her sons.
The other was drowned. Her husband was massacred
on the 2nd of September. Her eldest daughter died
in a prison hospital; her younger daughter, a clever,
noble creature, sank beneath the weight of her grief
before completing her thirtieth year. The story of
Niobe was not more tragic than that of this unfor-
tunate mother." *
In the ranks of the nobles she saw "brilliant
nullities”; amidst the high dignitaries of the prelacy
many of notorious reputation. These were separated
from the numberless parish priests by a band of
music. Then came the Tiers, advocates, notaries, a
few doctors, thirty-eight small proprietors, about
sixty tradesmen, and amongst five hundred and
seventy-seven deputies perhaps ten men who had held
high offices in the State.†
Madame de Staël could not take her eyes off Mira-
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 194.
† Taine, Origines de la France contemporaine. La Révolution,
i, 155.
OPENING OF THE ÉTATS GÉNÉRAUX.
307
beau's broad shoulders and shaggy head of curly hair.
He, as it were, fascinated her gaze.
On the following day, the 5th of May, she was in
her place in the tribune for the opening ceremony.
Another eye-witness, Grimm, describes it even
more minutely than she does. A platform for the
king, princes, and high officials, was arranged at the
end of the provisionally erected chamber, which was
supported by Ionic columns, draped like a tent, with
white silk to shade the skylight, and adorned with
exquisite carpets. The throne stood beneath a
splendid canopy; on its left was an armchair for the
queen, and chairs beyond for the princesses; those of
the princes were to the right.
The Keeper of the Seal, and the Lord High Con-
troller of the Household, took their places at the
foot of the throne, and, further down, the Secretaries
of State at a long table, covered with a purple velvet
cloth embroidered with golden lilies; right and left
were councillors of state, maîtres de requêtes, the
provincial governors, and military commanders. The
whole of the right side was filled by the deputies of
the clergy, the cardinals, and episcopacy in full
canonicals. Opposite them sat the nobles in black
cloak and tunic embroidered with gold, turned-up
hat, lace cravat, and white stockings.
In the middle sat the Tiers, facing the throne, in
the black costume so often depicted in pictures and in
books, with the short mantle and three-cornered hat
without any distinguishing ornament.
x 2
308
MADAME DE STAËL.
The ambassadors and onlookers, numbering, per-
haps, two thousand-chiefly ladies in the first row-
occupied boxes separated by the pillars.
Amongst the ministers Necker alone appeared in
the simple garb of a citizen, "pluie d'or, sur fond
canelle," richly embroidered, in place of the aristo-
cratic dress and accompanying sword, or the official
attire of the members of parlement. Loud cheers
greeted his entry, and were renewed for the Duke of
Orleans when he alone of the princes of the blood
appeared as a representative of the Tiers for Crepy
in Valois, and gave precedence to a parish priest, his
colleague.
The deputies for Dauphiné received a certain
amount of recognition from the fact that their action
had led to the assemblage of the States, but the attempt
to cheer the deputy for Provence was received with
groans and hisses. The Comte Mirabeau was the
first to comprehend that these were directed against
himself. Heralds in splendid attire, and the royal
guards, were meanwhile distributed about the chamber
to keep order.
Two hours later, about eleven o'clock, the king
entered. He was surrounded by his entire household
and the high officials of the crown, and wore a long
mantle and a hat adorned with plumes and splendid
diamonds, but it could not fail to be remarked that he
wore none of the insignia of royalty.* The whole
* Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. ii. 174.
BARON GRIMM ON THE SUBJECT.
309
assemblage rose to receive him, with enthusiastic
cheers.
Some time elapsed before the queen made her
appearance. She had been received with icy silence
on the previous day, and her features now betrayed
signs of unusual emotion.
For the first time Madame de Staël felt anxious and
uneasy. She felt that the weight of the situation
might be read in the expression of the deputies, and
wondered within herself "what would be the end
of an assembly which had nothing to do but to
talk."
The king read his speech, greeting his estates with
much dignity. It expressed the most fatherly feel-
ings, and hopes that better times might be in store,
but contained nothing of any political importance.
The king was nevertheless twice interrupted by
cheers. It was expected that his councillors' speeches
would contain what his own had omitted.
Barentin, the Keeper of the Seal, took up the word
after him, but said even less. He touched but slightly
on the great question of the manner in which the
elections should be conducted, and only mentioned
that the States-General would decide on the subject,
with the consent of his majesty. He then returned
to commonplaces, as to the necessity of peace and
harmony, and the blessing of sweeping reforms.
Next followed Necker with a three hours' speech.
At the end of the first half hour, Broussonet, who
represented the farming interest, continued to read
310
MADAME DE STAËL.
for the minister, but the latter finished his own speech,
that the bad impression might be removed which it
seemed to create.* It was principally financial, and
as such reiterated the tactics of the compte rendu.
It contained nothing that was false, but by ignoring
various important points it gave a false impression
of the situation. The yearly deficit, reduced since
the days of Brienne by about fifteen millions, was
given at fifty-six millions, but the alarming fact that
the floating debt amounted to five hundred and fifty-
one and a half millions was left in the back-ground,†
whilst the steps towards balancing the yearly budget
were entered into so minutely that the advisability of
selling the Government tobacco as snuff was even
discussed.‡
The style of handling the subject was moreover
intentional. Necker not only firmly believed that
the monetary difficulties of the State might be got
over by quiet, order, and wise economy; he desired
beyond everything to avoid every acknowledgment
of an embarrassment which could lower the king's
dignity in the eyes of the national representatives.
After endless phrases, the minister at length
reached the principal point-the great constitutional
question, whether votes were to be taken by head or
by order. Without doubt the king had the right to
* Chérest, La chute de l'Ancien Régime, iii. 22.
† Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 45, 46. Leser, Necker's
Zweite Ministerium, 123.
‡ Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. ii. 176, note.
NECKER'S SPEECH.
311
decide. It would have been useless jealously to
guard his position with reference to the financial
question if his authority were to be of no weight in
the constitution of the States, which had been re-
minded very shortly before that they had to thank
the king alone for a renewal of their existence. Next,
amidst breathless silence, came the mere expression
of a wish on the part of the Government, instead of
the expected decision. Necker proposed that the
States should at first take counsel separately, that
the nobility and clergy might of their own free will
accomplish the sacrifice of their pecuniary privileges,
upon which each order might appoint special com-
missioners to decide on the questions to be discussed
separately or collectively. He had something to say
in favour of either mode of voting, and ended by
inviting the assembly to assist the sovereign with wise
counsel, to initiate the welfare of the State, and not
to be outdone by the beneficent tendency of the
age.
*
The minister's personal sympathies were to a
certain extent betrayed in the remark that it would
be easier for the monarch to impress his influence on
one assembly than to make it felt if there were two
Chambers. Necker did not venture more emphati-
cally to recommend his favourite system of govern-
* Lord Auckland, Correspondence, i. 320. The correspondent is
Huber, a relation of the Necker family. Madame de Staël, xii. 196,
197. Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance du Baron de Staël-Holstein,
99, 100. Dépêche No. 113 of the 10th May, 1789.
312
MADAME DE STAËL.
ment.* When late in the afternoon the sitting and
its solemnity came to an end, the king rose and left
the assembly, amidst enthusiastic cheers.
Whilst the queen prepares to follow him, "a voice
imbued by the milk of human kindness originates a
faint vive la reine; she makes a deep curtsey, and earns
an ovation."† A joyous multitude then accompanied
the court back to the royal palace. Necker was again
cheered.
The very next day the crisis was reached with the
formal question of verifying the votes.
The nobles did not hesitate to verify their man-
dates. The clergy seemed ready to do the same;
when the Tiers demanded that the verification should
be carried out by all the three orders, and referred
to the precedent of 1483, whereas the nobles took up
their position from the opposite mode of proceeding
in 1614.
On the suggestion of the clergy, commissioners
were appointed to negotiate between the orders, but
no understanding was achieved. Whilst the oppo-
sition of the nobles was considered as punishable
defiance, the peace-loving moderation of the clergy
was quite as severely criticised. Lally Tollendal
accused them of waiting to give their adhesion to the
victorious side.
* Necker, Discours à l'Ouverture des États Généraux. Euvres
complètes, vi. 611.
Jared Sparks, Life of Gouverneur Morris, with selections from his
Correspondence, i. 304, 308.
MIRABEAU AND NECKER.
313
At the end of May, shortly before these events took
place, Mirabeau attempted for the second time to
come to an understanding with Necker. Undeterred
by hatred and enmity, only too ready to attain
leadership at the price of revolution, although not
entirely as the instrument of democracy, Mirabeau
had on the 18th of May frustrated Sièyes' first in-
direct attempt, inspired by his friend Chapelier, to
unite the two first orders to the Tiers, and in event
of failure to constitute the Tiers a national assembly.
Mirabeau himself wished to unite the orders, but not
to give the Tiers the sole mastery.
The more he got to know and to despise the
elements around him the more he disapproved of the
conduct of the Government.
"Did Necker but possess a shadow of talent," he
wrote in May, "he would have secured taxes return-
ing sixty millions, a loan of one hundred and fifty
millions, and would have sent us all home on the
ninth day. With a particle of character he would be
unassailable, he would side with us who would fight
his battles, would rule the court, as Richelieu did, and
we should be born again."*
Mirabeau did what Necker left undone. He be-
came a journalist, attacked the ministry, saw his
first paper suppressed,† organized a second paper for
*Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 350.
† Mirabeau's Les États Généraux, which only appeared for a short
time.
314
MADAME DE STAËL.
himself, and with it a party throughout the land,*
took possession of the tribunes; earned first a hear-
ing, and then applause, and on the 27th of May had
nearly gained his point, with the help of the clergy,
when the king interposed on the 28th with a com-
promise. In a special despatch to the orders he
invited them to verify their powers singly, and then
to exchange the results, and in cases of doubt to refer
to ministerial decision. When the king's message
was to be read to the Tiers, Malouet demanded that
the galleries should be cleared, and was accused of
"The
cowardly perfidy by no other than Volney.
deputies," he said, only too prophetically, "must delib-
erate in the presence of their masters." †
From these galleries, in the principal clubs of the
capital, especially in the Breton club (to become the
Jacobin club later on), and in the cafés of the Palais
Royal, people were already making experiments in
the art of governing, and were now unwilling to be
disturbed in their occupation. The king's invitation
was answered with reservations on the part of the
nobles, which made it possible for the Tiers to decline
it, on their part.
The clergy announced themselves undecided, but
the majority were well known to have favoured the
interests of the Tiers. On the 9th of June the re-
newed discussions again came to nothing, and the
* Mirabeau, Lettres à ses Commettants.
† Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. ii. 191, 192.
MIRABEAU AND NECKER.
315
next day Sièyes proposed that the two other orders
should be invited to join the Tiers, and thus to "cut
the only cable which held the ship to the shore." He
had not long to fear that the king would succeed in
obtaining peace. Victory was secured to the third
estate by the alliance of the parish priests amongst
the clerical deputies, and that of the liberal minority
among the nobles. If a higher power did not consent
willingly it would be compelled to do so.
In the tension of the moment the statesman got the
upper hand in Mirabeau. He alone amongst all his
colleagues asked himself what was to happen after
victory, and whether it were advisable to leave an
order which had already been proved, for another
which apparently meant to start with usurpation.
This perplexity brought about his second attempt at
a fusion with Necker. The loyal, thoughtful attitude
of Malouet had so impressed him in the Tiers that he
allowed his Genevese friend Duroveray to arrange an
interview with him, to which Malouet rather un-
willingly assented. He met the deputy for Aix at the
house of a third party, and with some surprise heard
him declare that he shared his opinions. Never,
Mirabeau declared, would he sell himself to despotism;
what he really desired was a free constitutional
monarchy. The monarchy was not to be disturbed.
Amongst his colleagues, dangerous and seditious in-
dividuals were to be found. Those amongst the aris-
tocracy who had any intellect had no common sense.
It was of small importance whether sympathy or
316
MADAME DE STAËL.
liking existed between himself and the ministers. It
was much more important to know whether they had
any plan to recommend. "If such exist and it repose
on a reasonable basis," ended Mirabeau, "I engage
to support it with all the influence I possess, and
to lend my whole strength to check the democratic
invasion with which we are threatened." Malouet,
whose long cherished wishes were thus realised in
another, hastened in highest spirits to communicate
with the ministry, and to effect the meeting desired
by Mirabeau. He had a long interview with Mont-
morin and Necker, but could not impress upon them
the importance of Mirabeau's co-operation. "They
hated Mirabeau and did not as yet fear him." Necker
said nothing, and gazed at the ceiling, a proceeding
which always betokened extreme indecision on his
part. He showed himself, however, more accessible
than Montmorin, and an evening was fixed for the
meeting with Mirabeau.
Unfortunately, Mirabeau arrived without Malouet,
and had to meet the stiff, reserved man by himself.
Necker adopted the coldest tone, and said: "M.
Malouet tells me, sir, that you have propositions to
make to me. Of what nature are they?" Mirabeau
recoiled at this reception, measured the man who
could thus address him with a contemptuous glance,
and replied, "My proposition is that I wish you good
day," and so departed. He found Malouet in the
hall appropriated to the Tiers, climbed over several
benches to reach him, and said to him wrathfully:
SITTING OF THE 15TH JUNE.
317
"Votre homme est un sot, il aura de mes nouvelles."*
It was at the same period that he uttered the his-
torical words to de la Marck: "The Government
ship is lashed by the storm, and no one is at the
helm."†
Necker always remained in his opinion "the watch
that was always slow." They met for the future as
opponents in the National Assembly.
Madame de Staël defends her father from the re-
proach of failing to secure Mirabeau at the critical
moment by saying that he was not the right man for
such work; others would have done it better; and
further, that Mirabeau would never have been satis-
fied till he had become a leader of the people.‡
She may excuse the mistake, which was one of the
greatest perpetrated during the Revolution, but she
would never have committed it herself.
•
What followed is well known. On the 12th of June
began the verifying of the powers by the balliages in
the Tiers; on the 13th the three first parish priests
appeared in its midst, and were received with cheers.
Seven or eight others followed next day, upon which
the assembly announced itself constituted, and on the
15th Sièyes declared it to represent the nation's will.
On that day Mirabeau spoke thrice. He demanded
* Malouet, Mémoires, i. 311, and ii. 471. Mallet du Pan, Mercure
Britannique, 2 Janvier, 1800. Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, 56.
Chérest, La chute de l'Ancien Régime, iii. 76.
† Sainte-Beuve, Camille Desmoulins. Causeries de Lundi, iv. 97.
Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 262.
318
MADAME DE STAËL.
the king's sanction as a necessary condition, without
which he could not recognise the resolutions of his
colleagues as valid, and thundered out that he would
rather live in Constantinople than in France if the
sanction were not obtained. For nothing appeared
more dreadful to him than a sovereign aristocracy of
six hundred persons, who could to-day announce
themselves to be permanent and to-morrow heredi-
tary, and thus end like every aristocratic government
by assuming uncontrolled mastery. A vision of the
convention floated through his mind, and an excited
opposition hurled the accusation against him of having
sold himself to the crown. *
But Mirabeau's warnings were in vain. On the
17th June, incited by Sièyes, the Tiers declared by
four hundred and ninety-one votes against ninety in
favour of a national assembly. It accomplished its
first act of sovereignty by declaring that all taxes
raised without consent of the representatives of the
nation were invalid, but added that they should
continue to be paid provisionally until the assembly
was prorogued, and guaranteed the rights of the state
creditors.
Mirabeau did not approve of that day's work: in
the midst of his colleagues, triumphant, rejoicing, he
uttered the sombre prophecy that the first step
towards civil war had been taken. Even Malouet
* Mirabeau, Lettres au Major Mauvillon, 467, 17 June, 1789, and
Onzième Lettre à mes Commettants, 222, 235. Laboulaye, Cours de
Législation comparée. L'Assemblée constituante.
NECKER DECIDES TO INTERFERE.
319
owned that the Tiers had overstepped its powers. *
"The decree," says Madame de Staël, "was in itself
the Revolution.”
At last, when the decision had been taken, Necker
made up his mind to interfere. Incessantly, but
vainly, had he hitherto tried to persuade the king to
introduce a constitution on the English pattern. As
far back as the middle of May he had drawn atten-
tion to the alarming news from the provinces, and
expressed his fear that under certain circumstances
it might not be possible to rely upon the army. The
real situation was not as yet realised. The king might
employ the time to guarantee that which to-morrow
he might be forced to concede. "Never," added
Necker, with true insight into Louis XVI.th's cha-
racter, "would laws be a greater restraint upon him
than the promptings of his own conscience.” †
The only mistake the minister committed on this
occasion was that he did not speak out sufficiently.
Not only were the majority of the officers forced
into the opposition by the laws of 1781, which
debarred all the lesser nobility from filling the higher
ranks in the army, but the troops were themselves
disorganised and undisciplined. This was chiefly
attributable to an attempt made to introduce the
Prussian system, set on foot by a committee organ-
ised by Brienne, and presided over by Comte Guibert,
a great admirer of Frederick the Great.
* Malouet, Mémoires, i. 319.
† Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 218, 219
320
MADAME DE STAËL.
Corporal punishment was introduced, and the rule
that only officers holding the rank of colonel could
serve on the staff. Deprived in this way of the last
chance of filling the higher ranks, the middle classes,
the smaller nobility (and the soldiery for other
reasons), were so incensed, that suicide, mutiny, and
desertion increased daily, and two camps of exercise
at St. Omer and Metz had in 1788 suddenly to be dis-
continued.
Internal affairs were equally unsatisfactory. Toc-
queville had already set forth how and why the
cumbrous, irregular machinery of French policy had
come to a standstill, as its leaders could no longer
control it. Years before the Revolution, each new
attempt at reform had only made things worse, and
the authorities had fallen into such discredit that
they could no longer command obedience or enforce
the new institutions.
When the Revolution subsequently broke out, it
was a singular fact that tradespeople and merchants,
proprietors and financiers, all turned against the
existing state of matters, and the latter in particular
are supposed to have promised their pecuniary
support, if necessary, to encourage insurrection.
This was not often necessary, for in every quarter
of France during the summer and autumn of 1788, in
Burgundy, Provence, Normandy, Languedoc, raged
sedition and revolt, under pretext of restoring ancient
* Tocqueville, L'Ancien Régime, 286. Rivarol, Mémoires, 135, 186.
Chérest, La chute de l'Ancien Régime, ii. 100, 101.
NECKER DECIDES TO INTERFERE.
321
provincial rights and institutions, and Necker had to
smooth things over and give in to every faction, if
only to secure the loans without which it was im-
possible to carry on the government.
That he was
still able to prolong his financial administration was
considered even by Mirabeau to be "nothing short of
a miracle.” *
If Necker turned from the hopeless condition of
the country to the individuals sent to represent the
States, he, in common with many others, could have
no great opinion of the political insight and capacity
of an assembly which included the Cardinal de
Rohan, chosen by the clergy belonging to the bail-
liages of Hagenau and Weissenburg, or Pêtion, and
Brissot, the candidates brought forward by Lubersac,
bishop of Chartres. Shortly after the first days of
intercourse with the deputies, Necker gave his undis-
guised opinion that it would be much more practical
to allow the first man available amongst his followers,
who possessed a stentorian voice, to read aloud the
text of the British constitution from the tribune
than to allow so many political visionaries and entire
novices to speak on Government affairs without aim
or object.‡
This text was looked for in vain, both then and
later.
The king was to be brought to no decision, and the
* Chérest, La chute de l'Ancien Régime, ii. 136-140
† Idem, ii. 566, 575.
‡ Necker, De la Révolution Française, ix. 299.
VOL. I.
Y
322
MADAME DE STAËL.
representatives of the French nation in their immense
majority regarded the mere suggestion of a constitu-
tion, after the pattern of their English neighbours, as
an unbearable humiliation.*
The weeks uselessly squandered by the court and
states helped on the revolt in the provinces. Proofs
multiplied to justify Fréteau, the parlementeer, in
begging his colleagues, as far back as the beginning
of May, to occupy themselves less with political doc-
trine, seeing that war between the poor and the rich
was declared.† From the days of Fénélon and
Vauban down to those of Turgot and the Economists,
the agrarian question had in vain claimed solution at
the hands of the monarchy.
This subject, now so prominent, is thus noticed by
Madame de Staël: "The younger generations and
strangers, who knew France before the Revolution,
and who now see the people enriched by division of
the landed property and the suppression of the feudal
dues, can form no idea of what this country was when
still oppressed by all the former privileges.
"The partisans of slavery in the colonies have
often said that a French peasant was more wretched
than a negro. This argument was used for the con-
solation of the whites, and not intended to harden us
against the blacks." +
Now that most of these privileges were either
* Necker, Du pouvoir exécutif dans les grands États, viii. 42.
† Laboulaye, Revue des Cours Littéraires. May, 1869, 379.
Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 86, 87.
NECKER DECIDES TO INTERFERE.
323
abolished, or else on the point of being so, the
peasants engraved their interpretation of liberty, in
letters of flame, by reducing country-seats to ashes
and destroying archives. In the Palais Royal, in
the centre of the town, Camille Desmoulins encou-
raged all the brutal instincts of the masses with
prospects of plunder. Forty thousand palaces,
castles, and country-places, two-fifths of the posses-
sions of France, were to be the reward of bravery;
the nation must be cleansed," preached Robespierre's
schoolfellow, the author of the ode:-
66
"Necker descend de la montagne,
La raison seule l'accompagne,
En lui le peuple espère encore.
" *
Necker dared not admit that not only the third
order, the commons in Versailles, but the fourth order,
the peasants, had already risen in open rebellion
against the Government.
The opposition to the Court, among the nobility
and clergy, only awaited a similar sign to bring about
a reaction, to which Necker himself would be the first
to fall a sacrifice.
The excitement reached such a pitch that the Mar-
quis de Montesquieu could scarcely obtain a hearing,
when he, along with La Luzerne, bishop of Langres,
proposed to meet the resolve of the Tiers with a plan
to organise a higher chamber taken from the nobility
* Sainte-Beuve, Camille Desmoulins. Causeries de Lundi, iii. 80.
Y 2
324
MADAME DE STAËL.
and clergy,* and L'Espremenil loudly observed that
if the procurator-general did his duty he would pro-
secute the members of the Tiers for high treason.
But Necker might still hope to persuade the king
to uphold his policy, just because it took a middle
course between the extreme parties. He hoped to
prevent the return to the former state of things his
opponents wished to achieve by overthrowing the
Tiers, and to avert the destruction of every species
of government by means of an unconditional recog-
nition of the declaration of the 17th of June.
This coincided with his proposal that the king
should now use his prerogative to summon the Estates
to meet together as the Tiers had just done in defiance
of it.
The clergy and nobility were only to deliberate
separately upon their own special business; the con-
stitution to be drawn up by the Estates was to repose
on the system of two chambers, a strong executive
was to be assured to the king, beyond everything the
command of armed power; all the decrees of the
assembly to enforce the law were to require his sanc-
tion, and the public was for the future to be excluded
from the deliberations.† The king on the other hand
promised to abolish all the existing privileges of taxa-
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 198.
† Bertrand de Molleville, Mémoires, Appendix. Barentin, Mémoire
Autographe, 182, 183. Necker, De la Révolution Française, ix. 182,
196. Necker burnt the original project, with many other papers, when
Coppet was threatened by the Revolution.
NECKER'S PROGRAMME.
325
tion, to recognise the right of the Estates to have a
voice in the taxation and their share in making the
laws; beyond all things, civil and criminal law was to
be reformed and freedom to be secured both to indi-
viduals and to the press. The king was to declare
his royal will in solemn assemblage, and Necker
indentified his policy in the most emphatic words with
these proposals. He
He says, "My resolution was born
of the conviction that my plan would be supported by
the great majority of the nation. To declare war
against this majority and make light of public
opinion, another than I must have been found." *
The court was at Marly, in deepest mourning for the
little dauphin who had just died, aged seven years,
when Necker tried to persuade the monarch on the
19th of June, two days after the Tiers had been con-
stituted, to summon a cabinet council at that place.
At first the king appeared willing to fall in with his
projects, but on the following day, when the whole
extent of the concessions to the Tiers began to be
realised, grave
doubts arose : so that only three minis-
ters remained on Necker's side, Montmorin, St. Priest,
and La Luzerne. During the sitting when a defi-
nitive resolution was to be taken, both Necker and
St. Priest relate that the king was suddenly sent for
by the queen, and when he returned he put off the
matter till the following day, the 21st of June, upon
which for the first time the king's brothers joined the
* Necker, De la Révolution Française, ix. 217.
326
MADAME DE STAËL.
i
Council of State. Louis, Comte de Provence, spoke
moderately, but left the great question of the fusion
of the Estates undecided. Charles, Comte d'Artois,
was in favour of their continuing to sit separately, but
allowed that the pecuniary privileges and the burdens
on the people should be abolished. The ministers
Barentin, de Puységur, and Villedeuil, along with
four other councillors of state, were of the same
opinion.* The king then announced that he was of
the same mind as this majority, and on the following
day, the fourth of their deliberations, allowed the new
plan to be registered.
A biographer of Necker's recalls the fact that he had
means at his disposal for overcoming the opposition
of his adversaries. The treasury was empty. He
had only to make this fact public and to add that
without the consent of the Tiers there was no possi-
bility of carrying on affairs. But such an admission
would have been out of keeping with his official
statement of the financial situation, and his political
triumph would have been at the expense of his repu-
tation for obtaining credit. He therefore resolved to
keep silence, and, when he had explained that any
modification of his plan would make it useless, re-
frained from further discussing what course he should
pursue were he to be dismissed.
* Barante, Notice sur Saint-Priest. Necker, De la Révolution
Française, ix. 198, 199. Leser, Necker's Second Administration, 146.
Larcy, Louis and the États Généraux. Correspondant, Mai, 1868,
516-518.
† Leser, Necker's Second Administration, 146, 147.
EXCITEMENT AT VERSAILLES.
327
Whilst all this was taking place in Marly, a report
was spread abroad at Versailles of an approaching
coup d'état.
The excitement increased when the
master of the ceremonies ordered the chamber appro-
priated to the Tiers to be closed, that it might be pre-
pared for the séance royale. According to Madame
de Staël this was entirely due to a misunderstanding.
"The deputies thought," she says, or pretended to
believe, that they were forbidden to assemble,” * upon
which they adjourned to the tennis-court, and the
well-known scene occurred during which Mounier
summoned his colleagues to take a solemn oath not to
separate before the national constitution was agreed
upon. He claimed that the right of voting the taxa-
tion and a share in making the laws for the Estates,
regular sittings, and ministerial responsibility, should
be the foundation of that constitution.
Hardly a year elapsed before Mounier himself
wrote that this unfortunate oath had been an
attempt to resist the royal authority; he could not
sufficiently deplore having proposed it. "It was
the signal for insurrection," said Malouet, who,
moreover, already seriously intended to give up his
post, so thoroughly sobered was he by the daily
and unusual spectacle of the crowds of small people,
advocates, tradesmen, country doctors taking the
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 211.
† Mounier, Recherches sur les causes qui ont empêché les Français
de devenir libres. Lanzac de Laborie, Jean Joseph Mounier, 89-93.
+ Malouet, Mémoires, i. 278, 323.
328
MADAME DE STAËL.
field without any knowledge of affairs or any pre-
paration, quoting the Contrat Social and suggesting
plans.
The oath had been taken in the tennis court on
the 20th of June. On the 22nd of June the clergy
placed the church of St. Louis at Versailles at the
disposal of the Tiers. The lengthy deliberations of
the latter were at an end; 149 members of the
clerical body, headed by archbishops and bishops,
joined the Tiers, and were received with loud cheers.
On the following day, the 23rd of June, the king
appeared in solemn assembly without Necker. His
speech, delivered in a commanding tone, held to
Necker's programme in all essential points with one
decided exception-the three orders were still to
deliberate separately.
All that the Tiers had decided in opposition to this
was declared null and void, and the deputies were
commanded to separate that they might assemble
the following day in their separate orders.
Louis XVI. ended with the assurance of his im-
partial anxiety for the good of the realm.
If he could not obtain support he must carry it
out unaided. The majority heard him in icy silence,
under the over-mastering impression that the Crown
had taken the side of the nobility. When the king
had departed the Marquis de Brézé invited the
deputies to separate, on which Mirabeau made the
historical reply that "they were there by the will
of the nation, and would only yield at the point of the
NECKER TENDERS HIS RESIGNATION.
329
bayonet."* Sièyes expounded what had happened in
these words: "We are the same to-day as we were
yesterday, let us deliberate," upon which the assembly
declared the inviolability of its members. When the
king was informed of the refusal to obey his com-
mands he paced thoughtfully up and down for a few
minutes and then said: "Well, if they will not
vacate the hall they must stay there."
In the course of the day which had decided against
him Necker tendered his resignation. Baron de Staël
relates that at the council at Marly the Comte d'Artois
met the first hint of his intention by exclaiming: "No,
sir, you must remain with us as hostage: we hold you
responsible for all the harm you have done.Ӡ
Necker says that he did not wish to take the con-
sequences of the effect his resignation would have had
upon the king, had he tendered it before the séance
royale. But if he had attended it his popularity with
the ministry would have suffered. Lally Tollendal is
probably mistaken when he says that it was all that
Necker's wife and daughter could do to persuade
him to absent himself from the sitting of June
23rd. Bailly knew about it the evening before.‡
Whilst the monarch was compelled to retire from the
séance royale amidst murmurs and insults to his
* Chérest, La chute de l'Ancien Régime, iii. 256-259.
† Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de
Staël-Holstein.
‡ Necker, De la Révolution Française, ix. 215. Lally Tollendal.
Necker, Biographie Michaud. Chérest, La chute de l'Ancien Régime,
iii. 249.
330
MADAME DE STAËL.
own apartments, Madame de Staël witnessed the
crowd which surrounded her father's residence cheer-
ing vociferously.
Deputations from the nobles, the clergy, and the
Tiers were there. They shed tears when he invited
their moderation, and assured him of their confidence.
On which the king sent for Necker. The queen was
present. She had heard the uproar for the first time
from her own apartments, and tremblingly promised
to offer no further opposition to the minister's policy.
Louis XVI. implored Necker to remain in office, but
refused to allow him to dismiss the ministers who had
shipwrecked his plans. The excitement was so great
in Versailles that Necker felt he would have to yield
although he would not conceal from himself what a
dreadful mistake he would be committing.* He only
insisted that the troops should be withdrawn, chiefly
because he was by no means sure that they could be
relied upon.
The Treasury, le contrôle général, as it was called,
was under the same roof as the royal palace at Ver-
sailles.
The minister could return to it without showing
himself to the assembled multitude in the courtyard,
and Madame de Staël specially says that nothing
seemed more dangerous to him than a personal
triumph at the expense of the royal authority.f
* De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même, vi. 95. De la
Révolution Française, ix. 214.
↑ Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 236.
JEFFERSON ON THE SITUATION.
331
Nevertheless he showed himself to the populace to
quiet the excitement. The crowd conducted him to
his house amidst stormy ovations, and thus the same
day the monarch was insulted and his minister glori-
fied. Madame de Staël thought that all these voices
repeating her father's name were those of friends, and
that their affection for her father bound them to her.
She received him with the conviction that for the
second time he had restored the supremacy of the
king.* Necker did not thus deceive himself. When
his friends surrounded him and drew his attention
to the fact that the crowd called him the saviour of
France, he replied that perhaps before a fortnight
had elapsed they might pelt him with stones.†
he still agreed with his daughter in the opinion that
the monarchy although tottering might again be
restored.
But
An independent judgment could only be obtained
from those who were not carried away in the whirl of
passion let loose and who could observe the ferment
from afar.
Amongst these witnesses of the Revolution, the two
Americans we have already frequently mentioned,
Gouverneur Morris and Thomas Jefferson, were two
of the most prominent. The latter, who was Ambas-
sador from the United States, always measured people
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 234. Léouzon Le Duc,
Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-Holstein, 104, 10th
June, 1789.
† De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même, vi. 96.
332
MADAME DE STAËL.
according as they agreed or disagreed with his re-
publican ideal of liberty. He was not intentionally
unjust, but was quite aware that he had brought with
him "all the prejudices of country, habit, and age.
66
""
To these prejudices belonged an irreconcilable
hatred against monarchy, which he put on a par with
the greatest misfortunes that could happen to man-
kind. He considered that "if all the evils which can
arise among us from the Republican form of govern-
ment from this day to the Day of Judgment could be
put into a scale against what this country suffers from
its monarchical form, in a week, or England in a
month, the latter would preponderate." This did not
prevent his holding that Louis XVI. was capable of
great sacrifices," and that all that was wanted to
induce him to do a thing was to be assured that it
would be for the good of the nation.
In August
1788 he calls him "the honestest man in his king-
dom, and the most regular and economical," and says
that he had "given repeated proofs of a readiness to
sacrifice his opinion to the wish of the nation."*
"He had not a wish but for the good of the nation,"
testifies the old man of seventy-eight concerning
Louis XVI. But the latter was a king, and as such,
an irremediable evil. "Rather than see the Repub-
lican cause fail," Jefferson would not merely have
consented to his overthrow, but "would have seen
half the world desolated." +
* Jefferson, Complete Works. Correspondence, i. 400, ii. 221, 253,
439, 490.
+ Idem, iii. 502.
JEFFERSON ON THE SITUATION.
333
It is all the more surprising that on that 23rd of
June even such a fanatic as he should have earnestly
recommended his friends belonging to the Tiers not
to allow matters to come to an open rupture, but to
effect a compromise and to content themselves with
the concessions to which, in accordance with Necker's
programme, the king had on the whole consented.
"But," says Jefferson,“ my friends thought other-
wise, and time has proved how bitterly deceived
they were. After so many wars, the loss of millions,
the undermining of the happiness of many thousands,
and the final dominion of the foreigner, they have
not accomplished much more than what was offered
them on that day, and then not without the fear of
losing it again."
Amongst these friends of Jefferson who did not
allow himself to be convinced was La Fayette, who
according to the express instructions of his electors
was obliged to vote for the decision by orders and not
by persons.
"I have not hesitated to press on him
to burn his instructions and follow his conscience as
the only sure clue
If he cannot effect a
conciliatory plan he will surely take his stand man-
fully at once with the Tiers; for," writes Jefferson,
"his principles are clearly with the people." *
On the evening of that 23rd of June, Gouverneur
Morris dined with La Fayette. Like Jefferson,
Morris was a personal friend of George Washington,
*Jefferson, Complete Works: To G. Washington, iii. 29. Jared
Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, i. 314.
334
MADAME DE STAËL.
president at that time of the United States; for he,
too, had been a member of the congress which had
fought for their independence. He was well-acquainted
with Jefferson, although he had little in common with
the originator of the Rights of Man. Clever, accom-
plished, and inclined to irony, a man of the world and
with a thorough knowledge of his fellow-creatures,
his noble features so much resembled those of Wash-
ington that he sat to the sculptor Houdon to help him
to complete Washington's bust.
He had had his leg amputated in Philadelphia in
consequence of a fall in 1780. During the Revolution
in 1792 the populace on one occasion pursued his
carriage, shouting "Down with the aristocrat," when
Morris suddenly bethought himself of his wooden leg,
and thrusting it out of the carriage window, cried,
"What do you want with an aristocrat who has
lost a limb in the American struggle for Independ-
ence ?" Whereupon he was allowed to continue on
his way amidst shouts of applause.* To be satisfied
with mere words or to believe in the infallible supe-
riority of any form of government was almost impos-
sible to such a man. He judged France as it actually
lay before him, and not by the abstract chimeras
held by those around him.
When Jefferson spoke of the abolition of all differ-
ence of classes, Morris replied that it was problematic
* J. Chanut, G. Morris, Nouvelle Biographie Générale, xxxvi. 654.
Taine, Origines de la France Contemporaine. La Révolution, ii. Psycho-
logie du Jacobin.
MORRIS ON THE SITUATION.
335
whether and to what extent man would profit by it,
but he was quite certain that the French would not
be able to maintain it. In allusion to these views La
Fayette, who sat next to him at dinner, remarked that
he injured the cause as his sentiments were continually
quoted against the good party. "I seized the oppor-
tunity," says the American, "to tell him that I am
opposed to the democracy from regard to liberty;
that I see them going headlong to destruction and
that I would fain stop them if I could; that their
views respecting this nation are totally inconsistent
with the materials of which it is composed, and that
the worst thing which could happen would be to grant
them their wishes. He tells me that he is sensible
that his party are mad, and tells them so; but is not
the less determined to die with them. I tell him I
think it would be quite as well to bring them to their
senses and live with them.” *
Concerning Necker, Morris gave an equally decided
opinion. Shortly after his arrival in France, in Feb-
ruary 1789, he had become acquainted with the
minister and his wife, and afterwards with Madame
de Staël. He found Madame Necker stiff and devoid
of charm, but always busy with the welfare of others,
and felt real respect for her. Necker, he considered,
thoroughly upright, well-meaning and disinterested,
but not of distinguished intellect. In his own sphere,
that of finance, he was insufficiently informed,
although it would sound like a heresy to say so.
* Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, i. 314.
336
MADAME DE STAËL.
"He is utterly ignorant of politics, by which I
mean politics in the great sense, or that sublime
science which embraces for its object the happiness of
mankind. Consequently, he neither knows what
constitution to form nor how to obtain the consent of
others to such as he wishes. From the moment of
convening the States-General he has been afloat upon
the wide ocean of incidents." *
The plan which came to nothing on the 23rd of
June was virtually Necker's last effort to direct the
course of affairs. From that moment things took
their own course. On the 24th of June the clergy
then appeared in their full numbers in the hall set
apart for the Tiers. Next day came forty-seven
members of the nobility, with the Duke of Orleans at
their head, under the leadership of Clermont-Tonnere
and Lally Tollendal. The deputies who still held out
were already insulted by the people. A threatening
multitude in the streets of Versailles forced the arch-
bishop of Paris to conform to the decrees of his order.
Bailly, the provisional president of the National
Assembly, opened its doors to the first of these depu-
tations from the people of Paris which were soon to
govern it.
The royal guards were seen to assemble in the
public places and to openly announce that they
would defend the king's life, but would refuse to
* Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, ii. 93, 94.
† Necker, De la Révolution Française, ix. 219. Droz, Histoire de
Louis XVI. ii. 191.
THE ESTATES UNITE TOGETHER.
337
murder their fellow-citizens, for they were the
soldiers of the nation.*
In May Madame de Staël had called the army a
troop of citizens. Camille Desmoulins called them
"a legion of philosophers." Under his eyes hundreds of
Parisian soldiers were entertained in the Palais Royal,
and he well knew how to take advantage of their in-
creasing insubordination.† The impression made by
all this was so overmastering that the king, influenced
by the queen, who had been won over by Mercy,+
came back on Necker's proposition, and on the 29th
of June, when there was no further chance that his
decision could be considered voluntary, he commanded
the Estates to unite. This time the minister felt that
the sword had slipped from "the king's hands.
that fear was his adviser."§
Versailles was illuminated that evening, but a
feeling of irreconcilable bitterness prevailed. The
victors had now no further cause to be thankful for
a compulsory gift. The conquered only made a
pretence of yielding.
In the course of five days, the king had twice
given totally contradictory commands, and already
believed his life to be in danger. The nobles could
now make it apparent that it was no longer their own
* Jefferson, Complete Works, i. 93.
† Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 53.
‡ Wertheimer, Documents Inédits relatifs à Marie Antoinette. Revue
Historique, 1884, ii. 328, 329. Mercy to Kaunitz, July 4, 1789.
§ Necker, De la Révolution Française, ix. 220, 277, 278. Jared
Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, ii. 70.
VOL. I.
Ꮓ
338
MADAME DE STAËL.
affair that they had to defend; and informed the king,
by the Duke of Luxemburg, that they were mindful
of their duty, and ready to sacrifice their lives for
him; whereupon Louis XVI. replied that no lives
should be sacrificed on his account.* His surround-
ings did not share his resignation. If they were to
be made an end of, it should not be without a
struggle.
The court circles of Versailles found it impossible
suddenly to abandon a situation which had lasted so
long. Instead of tracing their destruction to a fatal
sequence of events, mistakes, and responsibilities, it
seemed more practical to make one man answerable
for it, and to be able to say that if only he were
removed the mischief of the last six months could be
undone.
Mercy, who had day by day followed events for so
many years, wrote anxiously to the Viennese Imperial
Court that an effort was on foot in Versailles to make
it appear that Necker was trying to use the enormous
popularity he had acquired to become the dictator of
the monarchy, and to induce the most Christian king
to do anything he might suggest.
He writes: "The Princes of Condé and Conti, and
Madame Adelaide, are at the head of this dreadful
cabal, and amongst other distinguished persons they
have drawn the Comte d'Artois, who is not very far-
Laboulaye, Cours de Législation comparée. L'Assemblée Con-
stituante. Revue des Cours Littéraires, June, 1869, 445. Chérest,
La chute de l'Ancien Régime, iii. 285, 286.
INFORMATION SUPPLIED BY MERCY.
339
seeing, into their toils, and they have selected this
prince to carry their damaging insinuations against
the above-named minister to the king's ear. ""*
Thus far Mercy, who does not omit to mention
that, considering his avarice, the suddenly awakened
generosity and popularity of the Duc d'Orléans could
only be explained by a hidden intention of filling a
place at the head of the Tiers very damaging to that
of the king. The situation in Paris justified this
alarm. On the 30th of June the populace freed
eleven soldiers who had been confined in the Abbaye
prison for insubordination, without encountering any
opposition from the watch. These incidents necessi-
tated reinforcing the troops in the neighbourhood of
Paris and Versailles by distant, therefore more trust-
worthy, regiments, under the command of the old
Marshal de Broglie, whose son belonged to the liberal
minority amongst the nobles, whilst the opposition
looked to the father, the hero of the seven years'
war, to defend their cause.
During this period a sense of victory caused a con-
ciliatory spirit to reign for the last time in the
assembly. On the 27th of June, two days before
the introduction of the king's decree commanding the
nobility and the clergy to unite the orders, Mirabeau
had delivered a memorable speech.
He dreaded that the ill-will of the court party,
* Wertheimer, Documents Inédits relatifs à Marie Antoinette. Revue
Historique, 1881, ii. 327. Mercy to Kaunitz, 4 July, 1789.
† Idem. Mercy to Kaunitz, 4 July, 1789.
z 2
340
MADAME DE STAËL.
and the excitement of the populace, might result in
deeds of bloodshed that could never be undone, and
he therefore issued a manifesto to the nation, in hopes
of appeasing the irritation, as a reminder of all that
had been guaranteed by the king even on that 23rd
of June, and as an expression of his conviction that
by strict moderation he would complete the work he
had begun. The king's subsequent resolve brought
this plan to nothing. It was not the last attempt to
come to an understanding.
On the 9th of July, Mounier laid the first draft of
a constitution before the assembly. In it he empha-
tically pointed out that it was much less necessary to
make new laws than to enforce those already in
existence. The fact must be remembered that the
French were not a recently civilised people, but a
nation composed of five and twenty million men, who
wished to strengthen their internal relations without
however weakening the foundations of the monarchy.
They were sworn to inviolable fidelity; the struggle
was only against despotism.*
But as usual there was no co-operation with the
minister at the head of affairs. Mounier states that
even he never saw the minister, and could only act
on general propositions.† "There were secrets and
* Larcy, Louis XVI. et les États Généraux. Correspondant, May,
1868, 522. Lavergne, Les Monarchiens de la Constituante. Revue
des Deux Mondes, 1842, 555, 556.
† Mounier, Recherches sur les causes qui ont empêché les Français
de devenir libres, i. 240.
MIRABEAU AND THE DUKE OF ORLEANS.
341
pretended secrets," said Necker, "and I think that
the king himself did not know everything."
Madame de Staël states that no one had informed
her father of the true reason of the concentration of
the troops, but he continually received advice and
information from outside sources which made it
impossible to mistake what was going to happen.
He returned home from the king, convinced each
day that he should find a warrant for his arrest
awaiting him.†
He again tendered his resignation, were his services
no longer welcome, and added that in that case he
would leave France as quickly and as quietly as
possible.
"I take you at your word," said the king, "but
wish you to remain.”‡
Meanwhile, on the 7th of July, the number of the
troops had increased under Broglie to thirty thou-
sand; fifteen thousand more were expected. No
one was further from expecting a coup d'état than
the monarch himself, who was against all violent
measures. About this time the project arose of
making the Duc d'Orléans lieutenant-general of the
kingdom by the side of the incapable king.
Mirabeau, who, notwithstanding the subsequent
denial given by his friends, agreed to a certain extent
* Necker, De la Révolution Française, ix. 225.
† Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 236, 239.
‡ Laboulaye, Cours de Législation comparée. L'Assemblée con-
stituante. Revue des Cours Littéraires, June, 1869, 459.
342
MADAME DE STAËL.
in the plan, did not by any means regard it as a plot,
but as an eventuality which circumstances might
bring about; he consulted with men of quite opposite
opinions, with the royalists Bergasse and Mounier as
well as with Turgot and Robespierre.* He now con-
sidered Necker to be merely a "pigmy," and he did
not think it necessary to take him into consideration
in any further plans.
A feudal reaction however must and should be
prevented. On the 8th of July, Mirabeau spoke
earnestly, wisely, and even moderately. His speech
led to the petition presented by four and twenty
members of the assembly on the 11th of July to the
king, praying him to withdraw the troops. Louis
XVI. replied that he was responsible for the public
peace. It demanded unusual precautions, and he
expected confidence. If the Assembly were uneasy he
would consent to its removing to Noyons or Soissons.
In that case he would himself go to Compiègne,—
therefore into the midst of the camp.
Comte Crillon quieted the malcontents amongst
his colleagues by pointing out that the word of Louis
XVI. was that of an honourable man. Mirabeau
nevertheless spoke warningly against sentimental
politics, and vainly pleaded that the petition should
be renewed for the removal of the troops.
On this 11th of July, Luzerne, the minister of
Marine, brought a note at three o'clock from the
* Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. ii. 284, 286.
THE KING DISMISSES NECKER,
343
king to Necker, reminding him of his promise that if
necessary he would leave the country, and proposing
that he should do it at once and as secretly as
possible. The minister received his dismissal with
so much presence of mind that the assembled guests,
amongst whom were his brother, his cousin Huber,
de Cicé, archbishop of Bordeaux, and Madame de
Staël herself, had no suspicion of what had occurred.
It was only remarked that from time to time he
affectionately pressed his daughter's hand.* After
dinner he proposed to Madame Necker, who alone
knew what had occurred, that they should take the
air, and they went out in the carriage as if for an
ordinary drive. After going a few hundred paces he
ordered his servants at half-past five to drive towards
the first post-house, and there asked them whether
they would be willing to accompany him out of the
country. Madame Necker would not allow him to
consider her feeble state of health, so they travelled
straight to Brussels. †
The king repelled the alarm felt by Breteuil,
Necker's successor in the ministry, that the latter
would excite a rising in his favour in Paris, and that,
therefore, it would be well to arrest him. This was
based upon as great a mistake as the whole coup
d'état, the full purport of which was never fully ex-
* Lord Auckland, Correspondance, i. 331. Letter from Huber,
Paris, 14 July, 1789.
† Necker, De la Révolution Française, i. 226, &c. De l'Administra-
tion de M. Necker, par lui-même, vi. 97.
344
MADAME DE STAËL.
plained. It is enough that it was universally believed
that it was intended to reduce Paris by famine, to
take two hundred of the States General prisoners, to
dissolve that Assembly, and to govern in the old-
fashioned way.
Notwithstanding every warning Necker was unpre-
pared for this turn of affairs, for he thought himself
indispensable to the public prosperity at a moment
when he alone protected the nation from bankruptcy
and starvation. When the news of his fall became
known in Paris enthusiasm reached a higher pitch in
his favour than it had ever done before. Green
cockades were worn, because green was the colour of
his liveries and because Camille Desmoulins had for
that reason first decorated himself with a leaf from a
tree in the Palais Royal, whilst, before an innumer-
able crowd of people, he called Necker's banishment
"the sign for a St. Bartholomew's Eve for patriots,"
and pistol in hand called the citizens of Paris to arms.
The theatres were closed, the storm had burst and
busts of Necker decorated with crape were paraded in
the streets with that of the Duke of Orleans who was
also thought to have been unjustly banished.
When Necker's brother prepared to follow him, he
and those accompanying him were stopped in the Rue
de Clichy and forced to return, "for," cried the
* Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, ii. 78. Morris to Washington,
31 July, 1789.
† De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même, vi. 97.
IMPRESSION CREATED IN PARIS.
345
people, "if he leaves us there will be no one left to
give us news of our father."*
Madame de Staël had returned to Paris on the 10th
July, in the evening. She only heard by letter of
her father's departure on the following morning, and
even then he did not tell her where he had gone.
He, however, ordered her to betake herself to the
country that she might not become the object of de-
monstrations in the capital. But it was already too
late for that. One deputation after another besought
her to receive it, and demanded her father's return in
the most extravagant terms. At last she got away
and went to St. Ouen. There she received another
missive from Necker with the news that her parents
were on their way to Brussels, and by the 13th of
July she had started to join them with Baron de
Staël. It was not without some difficulty that she
found them out-in this strange town, under an
assumed name in a strange inn-and sank weeping at
her father's feet. He and her mother wore the same
clothes in which they had left Versailles.
Without any preparation for the journey, and with-
out so much as a passport, they had had great diffi-
culty in reaching the frontier. Necker employed his
short stay in Brussels to renew his security for two
million livres with the Hopes' bank in Amsterdam
for a consignment of corn to Paris, that there might
be no hitch in provisioning the capital. He then left
* Lord Auckland, Correspondence, i. 335. Letter from Huber,
Paris, 16 July, 1789.
{
E
346
MADAME DE STAËL.
with Baron de Staël for Basle, and reached it on the
20th July.*
Madame de Staël followed with her mother in
shorter stages, and thus for the first time saw the
German Rhineland. A courier sent off by La Fayette
on the 16th July missed her at Brussels. It conveyed
the news of her father's recall: + but when the two
ladies reached Frankfort they found a royal courier
awaiting them from France with open letters from
Louis XVI. and the Assembly, recalling Necker for
the third time to take the head of affairs. They got
to Basle again one day later than these couriers, and
there they at last heard all that had happened in
Paris in the meantime: the desertion of the army,
which had so long been feared, with the exception of
a few foreign regiments; the struggle between the
latter and the rebellious Gardes Françaises; the revolt
in Paris; the plundering, the organisation and arming
of the National Guard; in one word, everything that
had put an end, by the 13th July, to any species of
government.
Next, the deeds of the 14th July, the taking of the
Bastille, the murder of De Launay and Flesselles ;
the unconditional capitulation of the king § before
* Madame de Staël, Du Caractère de M. Necker et de sa Vie privée,
xvii. 52. Necker to his brother Germany, Basle, 24 July, 1789.
† Lord Auckland, Correspondence, i. 336. Letter from Huber, Paris,
16 July, 1789.
† Madame de Staël, Du Caractère de M. Necker et de sa Vie privée,
xvii. 44-51. Considérations, xii. 246.
§ Jefferson, Complete Works, i. 99. Lord Auckland, Correspondence,
i. 328, 333, as an eye-witness.
THE 14TH JULY.
347
the Assembly; the persuasive speech made in honour
of Necker by Lally Tollendal, as ambassador from
the Assembly in the Hotel de Ville; the end of
Bréteuil's administration, after three days' duration;
the failure of the plans in favour of the Duke of
Orleans through the appearance of the king in the
capital and at the Hotel de Ville, when he "thus con-
cluded an amende honorable such as no sovereign ever
made and no people ever received."* Mirabeau him-
self said when he heard of this step of the king's,
"Whoever recommended him to take this step is a
bold mortal; without it Paris would be lost to him.
Two or three days more, and he could not have gone
back."
No less extraordinary than the news were the
messengers that brought it. On the evening of the
15th July the first emigration began. It included
the Comte d'Artois, his friends Bréteuil and Mon-
tesson, the Duchesses de Polignac and de Guiche,
the Comte Vaudreuil, the Abbé de Vermond; all
intimate friends of the queen. Necker's informant
was the Duchesse de Polignac. She sent to ask him
to come and see her in her hotel at Basle, and after
sympathising with him in his fall she described to
him the events that had resulted from it, and those to
which she had now fallen a sacrifice.
Madame de Staël tells us that Necker, who had
never thought of the possibility of prescription, re-
* Jefferson, Complete Works, i. 101, 102. Dumont, Souvenirs sur
Mirabeau, 114, 115.
348
MADAME DE STAËL.
quired a little time to realise the concatenation of
circumstances imparted to him by the duchess. Then
their paths separated never to meet again. She
went to the native land of her friend the queen,
and at Vienna distress at the tragic end of the
companion of her happy days hurried her to an early
grave.
Necker on his side made up his mind to return "to
a court the temper of which he had experienced; to
an empty treasury, and to a people whose favour might
very probably be quite as exhausted." Whilst still at
Basle he wrote to his brother, Necker de Germany,
that a precipice seemed to yawn beneath him.*
Madame Necker sought in vain to dissuade him. His
daughter does not mention what her own personal
bias was-but everything leads us to think that she
could not do otherwise than urge his return.
It was during this short stay in Switzerland that
they formed acquaintance with Lavater. He was
spending the summer of 1789 with his friend Sarasin,
for change of air, when he met Necker. His letters
describe Necker's characteristic countenance as pos-
sessed of the "gentlest, sweetest features." He says
nothing of his "clever daughter" beyond mentioning
that they spoke together of physiognomy.†
Madame de Staël's journey from Basle to Paris, by
* Necker, De la Révolution Française, ix. 237-240. Madame de
Staël, Du Caractère de M. Necker et de sa Vie privée, xvii. 52.
† Gessner, Life of Lavater, iii. 123, Lavater, Answers to Questions
and Letters, Berlin, 1790.
NECKER AND HIS FAMILY RETURN TO PARIS. 349
her father's side, resembled a triumphal progress; and
she appreciated it to the utmost.
Crowds joyfully received Necker in the towns; on
the roads the women went on their knees when they
saw his carriage appear; the foremost citizens took
the postilion's place; more than once the horses were
unharnessed that the people might drag his carriage
along. On one of these occasions, Junot, who was
to become a marshal, very nearly lost his life in the
crowd. Necker spoke frequently to the crowd, recom-
mended calm and moderation, and procured passes
for people who were threatened, to enable them to
leave the country without hindrance. Ten miles
from Paris he met Besenval, the commandant of the
Swiss regiment, which had been brought into the
capital on the 12th July, and which he led back
from Paris to Versailles after the encounter with the
rebellious soldiers of the nation, and without their
having made common cause with the people. The
king had permitted him to retire to Switzerland,
but he was arrested on the road, to be delivered
to the future Paris municipality, by order of the
electors.
The horrible murders of Toulon and Berthier on
the 22nd July left little doubt as to his probable
fate. Necker in vain endeavoured to procure a free
pass for him, and now resolved to do all he could in
Paris to secure his release. He first betook himself
with his belongings to Versailles, where the king
gave him a gracious reception, and assured him of
350
MADAME DE STAËL.
his entire confidence, and next proceeded to the
assembly to express his thanks to it.*
The following morning he hurried to Paris, where
every neck was craned to see and greet him, and to
the Hotel de Ville to snatch their victim from the
people. "I went on my knees, I humbled myself in
every conceivable way," he himself relates, "to save
Besenval." †
In a long touching speech he begged for pardon
and amnesty; in the excitement of the moment he
made the most dangerous admission; he told the
victorious leaders of the rebellion that the Govern-
ment no longer possessed any power, and that the
salvation of the State lay in their hands-in that of
the National Assembly. He, the minister, implored
them to make an end of proscription and bloodshed.
This speech, made at first to a hundred and twenty
members of the commune, had such effect that he
was obliged to repeat in the public hall. There he
was awaited by foreigners of distinction, members of
the National Assembly, his wife and daughter.
Adorned with the Parisian cockade, which the king
had stuck in his hat a fortnight before, and amidst
loud applause and cries of "pardon-amnesty," he
was obliged to show himself on the balcony to the
enthusiastic crowd. After the representatives of the
commune had conceded Besenval's release, a resolu-
* Madame de Staël, Du Caractère de M. Necker et de sa Vie privée,
xvii. 54, &c. Compare with Droz, ii. 389.
† De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même, vi. 103. Troisième
Ministère de M. Necker, vii. 5.
THE SITUATION AFTER THE 14TH JULY. 351
tion, granting amnesty, was drawn up by Lally Tol-
lendal, in the name of the members of the assembly,
and their consent announced.
Necker was now revered as the saviour of the
state, and the people seemed nearly beside themselves
when he spoke to them of peace and reconciliation.
Madame de Staël remembered nothing more in that
hour, for, overpowered by her emotions, she sank
fainting to the ground.
She writes at the age of four-and-twenty, that this
was her last completely happy moment, and, although
she was in the full prime of life, she says that when
she recovered consciousness she felt as if she had
reached the limit of human happiness. *
A very remarkable letter of hers to king Gustavus,
dated August 1789, gives a clear impression of the
opinions held in the Necker family, both as to the
past and the immediate future. "Sir," she writes,
"accept the expression of my homage after so many
terrible, glorious, and incredible events.
I ask my-
self whether a thousand years have elapsed during
the last year, the last month; I should think I had
been transplanted into another world if my glorious
king were not still in existence. Your majesty will
be informed about everything, and will have formed
an opinion, to which I should defer unconditionally
if
you had formed it by personal observation."
"Any one who was not on the spot, and far from
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 258. Du Caractère de M.
Necker et de sa Vie privée.
352
MADAME DE STAËL.
the scene of action, might find it difficult to under-
stand the origin of such weighty results, and might
be tempted to make other than the actual circum-
stances responsible for these dreadful occurrences.
"I who have been in the midst of it all, and know
that he whom I held most dear was at the helm
during the storm, can have little doubt as to the real
cause of what has taken place. It is evident to me
that it was owing to a court cabal, supported by the
extravagant demands of the nobility, to whom Ver-
sailles represented the whole nation, and who hoped
to annihilate the rights of the people, by an attack
upon their truest defender in the person of Necker.
"At their head was the Comte d'Artois, who suc-
ceeded in identifying his cause with that of the
nobility in the mind of the king. The example in
Sweden, where your majesty encountered difficulty
with the nobles only, was of no avail, nor the know-
ledge that the king's power must be grounded on his
popularity. My father vainly repeated in the minis-
terial council that millions of men were ready to
fight at the back of the six hundred members of the
Tiers. Things which required wise deliberation were
scornfully overlooked. My father's departure, the
concentration of the troops, the appointment of an
unpopular ministry, were like thunder-bolts from one
end of the realm to the other. I do not believe in
the report universally circulated of the intended bom-
bardment of Paris and imprisonment of the deputies;
but I think that people were mistaken in believing
LETTER FROM MADAME DE STAËL TO GUSTAVUS III. 353
that the king's authority would be restored if the
Estates-General were dismissed, or that he could be
persuaded that Necker was deceiving him when he
insisted that it was no longer possible to dismiss the
Estates.
"No sooner was my father's banishment made
known than the nation rose up in arms, and I doubt
not that both foreigners and Frenchmen took advan-
tage of the situation for the furtherance of unworthy
plans and to promote disturbances.
"But they could never have succeeded except
through the mistakes of the Government and my
father's dismissal.
"A cabal or isolated disturbance could be organised
by means of gold and the dissemination of untruths,
but a whole nation could not rise without some gene-
rally acknowledged and sufficient cause. During the
short space of a fortnight the situation was entirely
altered. My father, who had fled from France and
his own glory as others flee before disgrace, returned
as a sacrifice to the common weal, and not to satisfy
his own ambition. He found every form of govern-
ment disturbed or abolished. Violence had obtained
the mastery as in the days of old. Instead of advan-
cing, a nation possessing a great past seemed to have
fallen into second childhood. A corrupted populace
dreamt of liberty after the American pattern. This
liberty was to be achieved without any preparation
of the public mind. In one word, he found an alarm-
ing chaos of opinions, and an irreconcilable difference
VOL. I.
2 A
354
MADAME DE STAËL.
between the dispositions and the circumstances sur-
rounding them. Time alone can efface the mischief
done in a single day. My father's whole efforts must
be consecrated to restoring the royal authority. It
can no longer dispose of the executive if the troops
will not obey, and in that case the country is lost as
well.
"The very fact of the prolonged existence of this
form of government proves that it is indispensable,
just as a sum in addition can be proved by substrac-
tion. My father never dreamt of disturbing its founda-
tions. He wished for reforms, which were as advisable
as they were necessary. As the king and the nobility
refused to grant them whilst there was yet time the
nation was brought to confusion.
My father constantly implored the king to grant
freely what would eventually be taken by force.
"The defiant attitude of the people, the unpopu-
larity of the monarch and of the nobles, may be
attributed to the pursuance of the opposite course,
which refused everything to reason, and was after-
wards obliged to surrender to violence.
"If this state of things continue, France must come
to an end, and its deliverance can only be effected by
terrible means. I still hope that my father may be
able to save it. Day by day he will encourage well-
doing and avert evil, and time will remove the
greatest difficulties.
"If these expectations be disappointed, flight is
certainly the only alternative. In that case it would
LETTER FROM MADAME DE STAËL TO GUSTAVUS III. 355
be preferable to take refuge in Constantinople rather
than to remain in this country, if given over to bound-
less license and the despotism of the masses. Your
majesty will pardon me for venturing to allude to
things which so closely concern me, and for giving
you an insight into events with which the glorious
name of my father is so closely linked; and if the
image which is ever before my eyes be calculated to
inspire indifference for worldly honours and distinc-
tions, it on the other hand increases respect for true
greatness. In proportion as equality is insisted upon
by despotism and anarchy, a monarch gains in worth
by reigning without oppression and securing the per-
manence of monarchical constitutions by his own
example.
"It is now my duty to inform your majesty as to
my own personal action. I was the means of arrang-
ing that Baron de Staël took ten days' leave of absence
to accompany my father at a moment when not only
the liberty but the life of the latter were threatened;
for the rage of his enemies grew in proportion to the
homage that was offered to him. I do not hesitate to
claim your majesty's indulgence in this matter, and I
recommend my husband and myself to your favour, in
the certainty that everything undertaken by Baron de
Staël is in furtherance of the service of his king."
Only when the excitement was somewhat abated
could the transformation, which three weeks had
worked in the history of France, be realised.
In the country the populace raged with fire and
2A2
356
MADAME DE STAËL.
sword against property; in the towns anarchy reigned
supreme.
The power wrested from the king had not remained
in the hands of the Assembly. "It was not a Revo-
lution but a dissolution; not the overthrow of one
Government and the rise of another but the begin-
ning of a despotism of the masses under the influence
of fear, credulity, and misery." *
66
Hardly any one paid the taxes; the whole ma-
chinery of government stood still. The officials had
mostly taken to flight; the archives were destroyed.
"The democratic harangues which were applauded
on the platforms," writes Madame de Staël, were
represented in the country by an equal number of
crimes. The epigrams of the speakers in honour
of the constituante burnt the châteaux; and the
kingdom was plunged into mourning by means of
phrases." +
When Necker unfolded a plan for a loan, on the
7th of August, to the National Assembly, he asked
whether it would have been possible to foresee the
unheard-of revolution which had taken place in a
few weeks. The evil had increased to such dimensions
that unfortunately no one could withstand it. Seen
from the central standpoint of the king's minister, the
picture was truly terrible. His sketch of the exist-
ing evil could not have been more clearly drawn,
* Taine, Origines, etc. La Révolution, i. 51.
† Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 270.
MIRABEAU'S REVANCHE.
357
but Necker ceased to make any attempt to grapple
with it. He declared his duty to consist in bowing
to the will of the Assembly and in endeavouring to
serve the king by means of the popularity he still
enjoyed. Just as he had implored the Parisian
municipality to spare the life of Besenval, in' like
manner he now prayed the representatives of the
nation to rescue the State.*
Necker's third administration had only a passive
part to play in the further history of the Revolution.
The short triumph at the Hotel de Ville did not last
beyond that evening, for on it Mirabeau's Revanche
took place.
Shortly after the 14th of July he had proffered his
services through his friend de la Marck to the queen,
and received answer that it was to be hoped that the
king would never be sufficiently unfortunate to have
to take refuge in such means.†
Hereupon, passion obtained the mastery, and as he
was unable to govern with the reigning powers he
now turned against them. His first thought had
been to get himself proclaimed mayor of Paris, in the
place of Bailly.‡ On hearing of the release of
Besenval he hastened to the capital, and excited the
public opinion against the resolutions of the Hotel
de Ville. Influenced by him, the already terrified
* Necker, Troisième Ministère, vii. 132. De la Révolution Fran-
çaise, ix. 240.
† Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. ii. 368.
Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 94, 95.
358
MADAME DE STAËL.
National Assembly declared that Besenval should not
be allowed to escape the law. Mirabeau's organ in
the press, the so-called Letters to his Constituents,
now openly said that the people had acted right-
eously and that the measure was full; the punish-
ment of one vizier would be a wholesome warning
for others. He himself said from the tribune,
speaking of the murders of the 22nd July, one
should not let oneself be moved by the fate of indi-
viduals; only by this means could one be a true
citizen.” *
66
That Besenval's life should have been spared was
the only gain of the day, which Necker had hoped
would be the first of peace restored, but which turned
out to be the last of his popularity.†
The way in which the events of the last few weeks
had influenced the opinions of her friends during her
short absence from Paris decided the future political
stand-point of Madame de Staël. Amongst these
friends, Lally Tollendal was the first who, on the 20th
July, endeavoured to stem anarchy, by a proclama-
tion to the French people.
On the 27th of July, Mounier presented the project
for a constitution, drawn up by the constitutional
committee, to the Assembly, which, taking the system
of two Chambers as its basis, had the restoration of a
moderate monarchy in view.
* Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. ii. 396. Correspondance entre
Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 99.
† Ferrières, Mémoires, i. 78.
܂
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY LEAVES CRIME UNPUNISHED. 359
He, Malouet, Crillon, bishop of Chartres, the
young Matthieu de Montmorency, Toulougeon, an
independent nobleman and an intimate friend of
La Fayette's, afterwards the historian of the Revolu-
tion, of whose impartial work Madame de Staël often
made use,* all shared Lally de Tollendal's opinion,
that the National Assembly was responsible for crime
which it did not know how to punish.
But individuals who had recently sprung up, such
as Buzot, the future Girondin, and Maximilian Robes-
pierre, were of a different opinion. This was the
first occasion upon which their names came before the
public. They spoke of the want of faith towards the
people, not of its wild conduct; called the Parisians
heroic, because they had used their natural rights,
and offered so much opposition that almost nothing
was done. The chief thing was to keep up the panic.
Mirabeau and Bailly name the amount paid out to
the agitators in the capital.†
The eloquence of Lally and his friends failed in the
end to secure the punishment of the murderers, owing
to the equivocal attitude of the deputy for Provence.
The proposed proclamation was a meaningless
invitation to peace and unity, and of the lengthy
debate nothing remained but the undying memory of
the words uttered by Barnave, after the murder of
Foulon, when he gave his notorious answer to the
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xiii. 102.
† Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 65, note. Droz, Histoire
de Louis XVI. ii. 357, &c.
360
MADAME DE STAËL.
demand for justice; "Was the blood that was shed
so pure ?"
Whilst Madame de Staël's above-named friends
could not rid themselves of the impression that the
ground was already sinking from beneath their feet,
another of those in her immediate circle was raised
to a prominent position by these same events. Since
July 15th, La Fayette had been commandant of the
civic guard, which henceforward was to be called
the National Guard.
We are told by the Baron de Staël that the idea,
first started by Sièyes, was carried out by Necker
himself.* Necker recommended the king, in the days
when he insisted upon the withdrawal of the Duc de
Broglie and his troops, to organise it as a species of
defence against the growing disorder, and with the
stipulation that he should himself appoint the officers.
After the 14th of July the Parlementeer Dupont
organised the arming of the people throughout France
with marvellous adroitness and energy. He had long
accepted every revolutionary doctrine. "Suddenly
the regular army found itself as it were taken prisoner,
by an army of from two to three million armed men,
for the most part without work or bread, who were
responsible to the municipality alone, whilst the king,
since the 14th of July, could no longer dispose of any
military authority." †
* Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-
Holstein, 121, No. 127.
† Necker, De la Révolution Française, 377. Madame de Staël,
Considérations, xii, 325.
LA FAYETTE AND THE NATIONAL GUARD.
361
Although the National Guard may not have been
originated by La Fayette, he performed other no less
important services.
He was the originator of the tricolor, which he took
from the colours of the town of Paris, and added to
the royal white, and which he prophesied would make
its
way over the whole world.*
Necker had to employ entreaties and representa-
tions to prevent his carrying this out by instigating
revolutionary movements in Ireland and in Holland.
The cap of freedom on the hilt of the sword, used by
the National Guard, was originated by him: and no
one is so closely identified with the naturalisation of
the “Declaration of the Rights of Men" as he is. July
the 11th, 1789, was the date of his first attempt to
carry it through. It may be compared to an attempt
to transplant green creepers, adorning the successfully
planned gable of a new house, into the rubbish and
dust of a demolished building. We cannot say
whether La Fayette was ever able during any part of
his term of command to enforce any other will than
that of those he was supposed to command.
When Madame de Staël returned to find him in this
position he had tendered his resignation, a week after
he accepted it, that is on the 23rd of July, after the
murder of Foulon and Berthier. But he withdrew it
the same evening, without receiving any assurance
that the murderers would be punished, a proceeding
which was often to be repeated on similar occasions,
* La Fayette, Mémoires, ii. 267, note, iv. 82. Sybel, Geschichte
der Revolutionszeit, i. 71.
362
MADAME DE STAËL.
without his ceasing to remain a popular hero of the
day. The influence of this popularity may be traced
in the chapter of the Considérations, dedicated to him
by Madame de Staël.
She considers him as the type of a true Republican;
and as he had sacrificed all class-interests, and proved
himself indifferent to wealth, she believed him to be
disinterested in friendship, and superior to the temp-
tations of ambition and vanity.
It is related that a petitioner who wished to obtain
a hearing from La Fayette brought forward his noble
descent, upon which La Fayette replied: "Sir, that
is no objection." Similar anecdotes were on every
one's lips. There were, however, plenty others,
which, under the form of a joke, often contained
serious instruction. It had become the habit in the
Parisian theatres to interrupt unpopular pieces with
noisy demonstrations, which had never hitherto en-
dangered life. A similar demonstration occurred on
the representation of Iphigenia. Rotten apples were
thrown into all the boxes which were supposed to
contain "aristocrats."
One of these missiles struck the Duchesse de Biron,
who sent it to La Fayette, with a note to the effect
that the first fruits of the Revolution that had reached
her should be his.*
La Fayette is still the type of the citizen-general
of the National Guard, and that corps was called by
him "his eldest daughter." His theories were formed
* Condorcet, Mémoires, ii. 65. Anonymously compiled.
LA FAYETTE AND THE NATIONAL GUARD. 363
on the " Rights of Man." He never departed from
this great declamatory utterance, and Charles X. used
to say that he and La Fayette were the only men who
had never altered since 1789. Niebuhr, who knew him,
confirms the correctness of this remark with regard
to La Fayette, although he adds that personally he
could not endure him, as he was so incapable of
altering his attitude.
The saying, which is so often misapplied, was
verified in him, "Que l'homme de bien est extrême-
ment peu de chose."*
No greater testimony to La Fayette's incredible
want of political foresight exists than his own. He
writes: "The profession of faith I issued on the 11th
July was both a manifesto and an ultimatum .... It
appeared three days before the national rising, the
last that was necessary, and the last that I desired."
But he himself led or permitted the insurrections
he had not desired-those of October 6th, 1789, and
April 18th, 1791,-because his power would have
been sacrificed, and then his popularity, if he had
opposed them, and he valued popularity more than
life.
In the midst of the revolutionary storm he found
heart to give himself up to the "delightful sensation
caused by the smiles of the crowd," and to congrat-
ulate himself that he possessed the favour of the
* Niebuhr, History of the Revolution, i. 201.
† La Fayette, Mémoires, iii. 219. Lettre à M. d'Hennings,
Wittmold, 15th Jan. 1799.
364
MADAME DE STAËL.
people, without which he could not exist." Public
opinion, the abstract power so reverenced by Necker,
had taken form in La Fayette, and now paraded the
streets. He thought he was leading it when he
placed himself at its head, decked out in the tri-
coloured scarf.
Washington warned him in vain against "his
unusual sensitiveness about everything that con-
cerned his reputation."*
Jefferson spoke still more sharply, and showed his
weak side to be "a canine appetite for fame."
Mirabeau quoted the Duc de Chioseul, who jokingly
called La Fayette "Gilles-César" on his return from
America. Mounier wrote to him after the 6th of
October as follows: "If you have ceased to be the
arch-promoter of the Revolution you still have re-
mained its adherent." §
On the other hand he had the undeniable virtue of
a spotless private life, brightened by the devoted
admiring love of his wife, who belonged to the de
Noailles family, and who was destined to give him
heroic proofs of her devotion.
Madame de Staël, who remained ever constant to
her admiration of La Fayette, nevertheless allowed
herself to be influenced by the marvellous intellectual
gifts of a man who could only be thought of in
contrast to him.
* Thureau Dangin, Le Parti libéral sous la Restoration, 46.
† Jefferson, Complete Works, ii. 106.
Thureau Dangin, Le Parti liberal sous la Restoration, 47, note.
§ Condorcet, Mémoires, ii. 329.
TALLEYRAND.
365
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, con-
secrated bishop of Autun, January 1789, laid early
stress upon the advantages of moderation, peace, and
temperate judgment, unwavering equanimity, and
the formation of wise views of life, which went side
by side with an insight that at times amounted to
genius. He never allowed himself to be carried
away by the optimism which led Napoleon to remark,
"La Fayette est un niais."
Talleyrand was surprised at nothing; he spared
himself and others expressions of moral indignation
which he did not feel, and at a time when almost
every one lost his head he remained a calm and
collected spectator, never losing sight of his object,
and pursuing it if necessary by means of intrigue and
plots; unrestrained by moral reflections but never
misled by petty vanity or deceived by insignificant
results.
His inexorable judge, Sainte-Beuve, is not justified
in saying that Talleyrand's memory is stained by his
share in Mirabeau's death. It is enough to charge
him with complicity in the murder of the Duc
d'Enghien thirteen years later,* remembering the
words of the poet: "Ainsi que le vertu, le crime a
ses degrés."
Talleyrand was aware of the
own way he had repudiated it:
accusation.
In his
"Did a clever, wise
man ever need to commit crimes?" he said. "Those
Saint-Beuve, Talleyrand. Nouveaux Lundis, xii. 12. Meneval,
Souvenirs, iii. 85.
366
MADAME DE STAËL.
are the means employed by political fools. Crime is
like a flood. It returns and overflows. I have
weaknesses, some people say vices-mais des crimes?
Fi donc !"*
The shadow of crime clings nevertheless to the
later Talleyrand, the Talleyrand of the Consulate and
the Empire. In the year 1789 he had not reached
that point, but he already worked broadly, and,
caring not for the masses, he overawed the powers
of
the moment, and above all endeavoured to outlast
them. He looked upon men as the pieces of the
chess-board, but knew how to move them better
than his colleague Sièyes, who only regarded them as
lifeless forms.
In the great world La Fayette was clumsy and
stiff; he was only at his ease in the clubs where he
could possess himself of the ideas of others,† or sword
in hand at the head of the people in arms.
Talleyrand on the other hand could be irresistibly
charming, because daily accustomed to social inter-
course, and skilled in the art of pleasing both men
and women.
Unrivalled in his social relations he
gave Rivarol the impression at five-and-thirty that he
could accomplish anything he pleased. As author
of the cahiers for his diocese he was one of the few
who only advanced practical propositions, and made
Lamartine, Chateaubriand et son Temps, 145.
† Rivarol, Galerie des Etats Généraux. Philarète (La Fayette.)
Idem. Amène (Talleyrand).
TALLEYRAND.
367
no allusion to the favourite dreams of an approaching
golden age.
*
He belonged to the intimate circle of the Swedish
embassy, having long been a friend of Necker's:
relations of a different nature existed between him
and the Comtesse Buffon, who in her turn was suc-
ceeded by the Comtesse de Flahault.
In the Assembly he was one of the closest adherents,
amongst the clergy, of the Tiers. It acknowledged
this by appointing him on the 14th July, along with
Mounier, Cicé, Lally, Clermont Tonnerre, Chapelier,
Bergasse, and Sièyes, to be a member of the committee
appointed to draw up the Constitution.
When the weighty question had to be decided
whether the mandates of the electors bound their re-
presentatives after the events that had meanwhile
occurred, the bishop of Autun made his first speech
in favour of full liberty of action for himself and his
colleagues. The resolutions arrived at on that occa-
sion decided nothing less important than the future
course of the Revolution. For the mandates of
1789, the so-called cahiers, so far required revision,
that those of the clergy and nobility, which in
most cases required their representatives to vote
separately in their order, had now become void.
On the other hand almost all the cahiers without
exception aimed, not at crippling or abolishing the
monarchy but at reforming it. Moderate men
like Malouet therefore recommended revision of the
* Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, Talleyrand, 24. Tauchnitz edition.
368
MADAME DE STAËL.
mandates, inasmuch as this was necessary towards
securing the existence of the Estates-General. Their
abolition seemed to him to entail the introduction of
despotism.* But it was Talleyrand's motion, not
Malouet's, which was carried, and the now fully-.
emancipated constituante was deputed to construct
the Republic.
What had taken place decided the line of action
for Madame de Staël's friends. The Duc d'Aiguillon,
Richelieu's heir, gave the first impulse to the incidents
of that memorable night when he proposed at the
Breton club to abolish feudal rights. In the Assembly
itself the Vicomte de Noailles, La Fayette's brother-
in-law, introduced the triple motion of equal taxation,
of the abolition of all pecuniary rights, and of bondage;
at the same time inviting the nobles and clergy
solemnly to sanction the abolition of the feudal system.
There is no mention in the Considérations of this
circumstance-one of the best known in the Revolu-
tion-but there can be no doubt that Madame de
Staël shared in the glad and enthusiastic self-sacrifice
which during that night not only renounced that
which was already lost in point of fact, or still more
did not deserve to be prolonged-but which also
abandoned the established rights of property without
any definite compensation.
The economist Dupont de Nemours, once secretary
to Turgot, alone held to statesman-like ideas: spoke
against novelties leading to uncertain results and
* Malouet, Mémoires, i. 299.
THE FOURTH OF AUGUST.
369
recommended that the law should be respected and order
restored. It is well known that the "electric current"
which seemed to have attacked everybody was only
resisted by two amongst the prominent members of
the National Assembly.
Sièyes, supported by Lanjuinais, wished to see the
tithes payable to the clergy redeemed, not suppressed;
and moved by this open attack against property he
uttered the celebrated words from the tribune-"You
wish to be free and do not know how to be just."
Mirabeau remarked to his colleague that he must
not be surprised if the bull gored him after he had
let it loose, and being prepared for what was in store
absented himself entirely from the sitting on the 4th
of August. Meanwhile by overthrowing the proposi-
tions for abolishing the honours belonging to the
nobility, he frustrated the latest attempt to establish
equality and to remove all class distinctions.
The next motion for the pacification of the country,
which had flung all restraint to the winds-in which
laws were of no avail and judges had no authority,
and where justice had become a mere phantom *-
found so little favour that Necker was obliged to
interrupt the debate on the resolutions of the 4th of
August personally to instruct the Assembly upon the
situation,
He expresses his opinion that this period of renun-
ciation was initiated by an utter disregard for the
* Account of the Committee of the Reports to the Assembly, Aug.
13, 1789.
VOL. I.
2 B
370
MADAME DE STAËL.
public advantage, and that the cession of so many
rights, not only by classes but by provinces, towns,
and corporations, without any settled indemnity, was
the work of undue and useless haste.*
In public he limited himself, however, to speaking
of the stagnation of all trade, the repudiation of
taxation and arrears, of the empty treasury, and of
the necessity for a loan of thirty millions to meet the
most pressing requirements of the next two months,
which Necker and many others with him imagined
would suffice to bring the labours of the Assembly to
a close.
In the debate on this motion the Marquis de la
Coste and Alexander de Lameth for the first time
let fall the threat, in their excitement, that the
Church property shonld be appropriated, as belonging
to the nation, to satisfy the State-creditors.
In consequence, however, of the reduction of taxa-
tion by the Assembly, Necker's loan was an entire
failure. He became really ill when he saw that "not
only his health and his peace, but his reputation was
compromised. Confidence was lost and the credit of
the nation destroyed: whilst never a day passed by
without disorders and punishable revolt."+ This
disastrous result of their attack upon the financial
administration soon induced the Assembly, with no
further difficulty, to vote eighty millions: and thus
Necker, De la Révolution Française, ix. 267. Troisième Ministère,
vii. 68.
† Necker, Troisième Ministère, vii. 39.
་
THE RIGHTS OF MAN.
371
leisure was ensured to return to abstractions, undis-
turbed by anything so prosaic as business.
Before the Constitution, "the Declaration of the
Rights of Man," called by Rivarol the "préface inutile
d'un livre nécessaire," was drawn up on the same
model as that whereby Jefferson prefaced the Declar-
ation of Independence at the Philadelphian Congress
in 1776; and drawn up still more minutely by him
for the slave-dealing State of Virginia when its con-
stitution was established, so that as a German his-
torian remarks: "A definition of mankind itself
would have been necessary before supplying a defi-
nition of its rights." *
Jefferson had borrowed the leading idea of it from
Locke, and from Locke's pupil, Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Thus under a foreign garb the fundamental doctrine
of the Contrat Social, teaching the sovereign rights
of the people, once more returned to its native land.
La Fayette ceded the honour to none of having intro-
duced the Declaration of the Rights of Man, not only
to his own compatriots, but to the whole human race.
"We desire," says his friend Duport, "an expla-
nation of rights for all men, all times, all lands, to be
an example for all mankind."
Whereupon Mallet du Pan is known to have re
ferred him to the precepts of brotherly love in the
Gospel; and Gneisenau, imploring moderation, is said
to have replied: "Inspire the human race first with a
* Bernhardi, Geschichte Russlands, ii. 175.
2 B 2
372
MADAME DE STAËL.
love of duty, and then let it think about its rights."
On which Talleyrand himself paid tribute to the
phrase, and called the Rights of Man "the law of the
lawgiver." *
When the flood of speech was at last stemmed the
victory remained more or less on the side of Rousseau's
ideas uttered by La Fayette: the sole aim of the State
was to be the greatest possible happiness for each indi-
vidual, as the expression of a union of which each
individual is a member but need obey no other than
himself and therefore remains as free as he was before.
In entire agreement with this, La Fayette started
from the theory of original liberty and equality for
all men, but immediately added that social differences
could only exist in as far as they benefited the common
good, by means of which he considered that institutions
similar to those in America might be obtained.
This idea was not realised. The people sought for a
tangible, practical result in all these vague and for
the most part to them unintelligible definitions, and
found it in the theory of the right to rebel against
the Government whenever it considered the latter to
be in fault.
La Fayette's Rights of Man, disseminated all
over Paris as a pamphlet, was answerable for the
rising on the 13th of July and for the storming of
the Bastille. The king was forced to give his sanc-
tion to the proposal on the 5th of October-on the last
morning that the monarch ever saw dawn in peace,
whilst under the roof of Versailles. And, that the
* Lanfrey, Essai sur la Révolution Française.
THE CONSTITUTION.
373
right of the sovereign people to revolt should in no
sense be restricted, Varlet, who was subsequently a
member of the Jacobin Club, hid the pale face of
murder under the protecting formula, that before a
bloody necessity, "Il faut jeter une voile sur la
déclaration des droits de l'homme." *
Previous to this, and owing in a measure to the
butcheries in October, the great constitutional battle
was fought in the Assembly.
The crisis was reached when the question of two
Chambers or one only, and the definition of the
king's prerogative, came under discussion. The con-
stitutional committee was not united in itself.
The majority, including Cicé, archbishop of Bor-
deaux, Lally Tollendal, Clermont Tonnerre, and Ber-
gasse, all wished for a moderate monarchy even if
they could not agree in detail. Talleyrand, Sièyes,
Chapelier, equally desired a monarchy, but it was to
be a royal democracy.
Mirabeau alone perceived that a monarchy of this
sort lacked the conditions of vitality, although all
parties approved of it. These included even Robes-
pierre, who voted with the entire Left for the con-
stitutional paragraphs, accepting the government of
France as monarchical. Mirabeau had the courage to
tell the Assembly that either it must renounce all
idea of forming a constitution or else find means to
restore some amount of power to the Executive. †
* Mortimer-Terneaux, Histoire de la Terreur, ii. 202.
† Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. 427, 428.
374
MADAME DE STAËL.
A constitution on the English pattern, or an Upper
Chamber, was no longer to be thought of. Not only
had the order ceased to exist that it would represent,
but the lesser nobility had joined the extreme left in
overthrowing the peerage. Those even who desired
this arrangement dared not so much as name it, but
were obliged to limit themselves to the proposition of
a Senate on Mounier's plan. It was to be composed
of two hundred members taken from every grade of
the people, chosen first by the Provincial Assemblies
and then proposed by the deputations to the king, and
by him nominated for life.
This Senate was in certain cases to appoint the
ministers to settle disputes; to pass measures with
the exception of financial laws and the budget; and
to vote like the second Chamber.
True to his programme, Mounier led the way to
the Constitutional Monarchy. He had already for-
mulated his ideas in what is thought by the historians.
of the time of Louis XVI. to be the best political
pamphlet written in 1789.*
Mounier endeavoured to counterbalance the undue
power of the Assemby not only by means of the
Senate, but he also required a strong Executive, as the
crown was henceforward to be called.
It was to
secure to the monarch the right of proroguing the
* Mounier, Considérations sur la Gouvernement, et particulièrement
sur celui qui convient à la France. Laboulaye, Cours de Législation
comparée. Revue des Cours Littéraires, 1869, 632. Lavergne, Les
Monarchiens de la Constituante. Revue des Deux Mondes, 1842.
THE VETO.
375
National Assembly, and even of dissolving it under
the absolute condition of fresh elections: it gave him
the absolute veto, that royal sanction without which
no decision of the people's Assembly had any power.
In this he was upheld by Lally, who, supported by
Montesquieu and his Anglo-American school, and
especially by the Genevese Delolme, repeated the
axiom, "A single power in the State would swallow
up everything; two would rival each other; but three
would maintain the equilibrium.'
""
On this question of the veto the storm broke loose.
Left to itself, the constituante would have assented
to Mounier's plan, for the secret votes always resulted
in his favour.* But the Assembly had long been
terrorized by the clubs, as they in their turn had been
by the streets. The danger menacing it always came
from above.
What had appeared a dream, impossible to realise
three months before, even to the boldest, was now no
longer sufficient. The unheard-of concessions to the
democracy-proposed by Mounier, partly against his
better judgment, and procured by excluding the king
from any active part in framing the laws and by
excluding the deputies from the ministry-no longer
sufficed.
When Mallet du Pan took up the cause in the
Mercure, and invited further discussion of this project
for a Constitution, four men armed with pistols ap-
VOL. I.
* Lanzac de Laborie, J. J. Mounier, 173, etc.
+
376
MADAME DE STAËL.
""
peared at his house, and, as ambassadors from the
Palais Royal patriots, announced that if he persisted
in this course his life would be in danger. In Paris,
proscription lists were circulated against the "traitors,'
as the adherents of a constitutional monarchy were
described by the representatives of the sovereignty
of the people. The constitutional monarchists re-
ceived threatening letters in the Assembly warning
them that they would lose their mandates and be pur-
sued according to the law.
Anonymous pamphlets threatened to teach the
adherents of the veto, amongst others the bishop of
Langres, then President, "a better sense of their
duty" by setting fire to their castles and country-
seats.
The Breton club, with Barnave, Alexandre de
Lameth, and La Fayette, declared against Mounier
and his friends. He was invited to conferences,
which mostly took place in Jefferson's house, and
here the latter relates that "discussions in the style
of Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero, were the order of
the day."
"For peace' sake," and, as he immediately adds,
"to frustrate the plans of the aristocracy," La
Fayette declared himself ready to accept a com-
promise if a veto were instituted which might be
suspensive instead of absolute, as Barnave and Pétion
had suggested, and which the king might put into
practice during two or three consecutive sessions.
THE VETO.
377
On the other hand he was to have nothing to say to
the composition of a council of ancients to be chosen
by the people.*
The ultimatum tendered to Mounier by Adrien
Duport in the name of his friends ran very differ-
ently. It was said of Duport that Barnave put his
thoughts into words and Lameth put them into execu-
tion. He undertook to vote for the absolute veto and
the dual representation of the people's assembly if
Mounier would on his part promise that the king
should have no power of dissolution, that the Senate
should have a merely suspensive veto, and that the
nation should have the power to summon conventions.
for the purpose of revising the Constitution. Mounier
refused the proposal.
In his opinion the utmost limit of concession had
been reached, and each further concession would
merely confirm the despotism of the Assembly and
the ruin of liberty.† He had still reason to hope
that the majority of the constituante would support
him. On the 8th September they had voted that the
legal offices were to be permanent. But on the 10th
September, when the vote was put whether there were
to be one or two Chambers, 490 out of 1200 deputies
were absent; 122 of those present declared themselves
insufficiently acquainted with the question to give an
* Jefferson, Complete Works, i. 105. La Fayette, Mémoires, iii.
203.
† Mounier, Rapport à ses Commettants. Thiers, Histoire de la
Révolution Française, i. 406-8, note 4.
378
MADAME DE STAËL.
opinion, and thus 87 men alone ventured to vote for
the division of the National Assembly.
From the isolation his unsuccessful tactics had
brought about, Necker could survey his political
defeat and the vain struggles of his adherents.
Faithful to their convictions, men like Malouet,
Bergasse, and Virieu, supported Mounier to the very
end.
But others like a certain member of the Right,
who said to Lally Tollendal "Are we to allow our
women and children to be sacrificed?"-permitted
terror to take the place of conviction under the
impression created by the invectives of Camille
Desmoulins, Loustalot, and Marat. Others again
were influenced by ambition or the wish to take a
middle course between the two parties. Barnave
had long separated himself from Mounier; and young
Matthieu de Montmorency followed La Fayette.
The greater portion who allowed themselves to be
led by impulse or example might have been won over
by either the one or the other when Necker's proposal
that the king should be invited to enforce the abso-
lute veto led them to a decision.
Later on, in writing to justify his action on this
point after he knew it to be impossible of execution,
he urged that he had at least wished to save the
suspensive veto.* Experience has not justified any
of the reasons he advanced in favour of it.
The minister thus lost the last opportunity he had
* Necker, Troisième Ministère, vii. 48.
NECKER IN FAVOUR OF THE SUSPENSIVE VETO. 379
of falling honourably. His intention of making the
deputies acquainted with his memorial explaining his
point of view to the king came to nothing, as they
refused to give him the chance of speaking, and the
absence of any understanding between the minister
and the deputies was once more evident.
On the following day, the 11th September, when
the votes were taken, there were only 325 for the
absolute veto, whilst the suspensive veto numbered
675. Mirabeau had rejected the senate the day
before, and now voted with the minority. Just as
he had tried to prevent the Assembly on the 10th
June from proclaiming itself a National Assembly, he
now protested against the idea of turning the sovereign
into the head official of a Republic, instead of seeking
protection from him as defender and representative of
the nation against the encroachments of an Assembly
which at any moment might exceed that of an aristo-
racy it had only just abolished.
As he could not carry this, he prophecied anarchy
with despotism in its train,* whilst Sièyes called any
kind of veto a lettre de cachet directed against the
nation, and endeavoured to protect the legislative
body against itself by skilful reconstruction.
The plan was at that time unheeded, but it was
again revised in the constitution of the year VIII.
During the period of voting Mounier hurried from
place to place to encourage his adherents. He
* Mirabeau, Courrier de Provence. Nouveau coup d'œil sur la
sanction royale. September, 1789.
380
MADAME DE STAËL.
tried to parry the blow dealt by Necker to his
party, by refusing to acknowledge the king's legal
right to interfere with the decisions of a constituant
Assembly, and rightly regarded the situation which
ensued as final.
On the same day he left the constitutional com-
mittee with Lally Tollendal, Bergasse, and Clermont
Tonnerre.
"Thus," writes Rivarol in the Acts of the Apostles,
with his invariable insight when things and not people
were in question, "the French monarchy ceased to
exist in September 1789 (whether permanently or
only temporarily we cannot as yet say), after having
existed since the year of grace 420, and survived
the most varied experiences through fourteen hundred
years. It began as a military aristocracy; it next
became a more or less limited monarchy; and it is now a
democracy with a crown surmounting its coat of arms."
Lally exclaimed in the Assembly that it was high
time to raise the veil and to defend the imperilled
throne.
According to the energetic words of Madame de
Staël: "The king remained unarmed and alone against
a nation of twenty-four millions, and was described
to be their most dangerous enemy instead of the
protector of their rights and liberties.
Assembly had combined a constitution similar to a
plan for conducting a war. This one mistake is
responsible for all the rest."*
The
It was only in the
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 310, 311, 321.
THE FINANCIAL EMBARRASSMENT.
381
logic of facts that the enemy should be spared no
humiliation.
It was Barnave who persuaded the Assembly only to
grant the veto to the king after he had consented to the
decree of the 4th of August. Then, when this was
also secured, Necker brought the alarming message
on the 24th September that the loans had failed one
after another. The creditors of the French State,
insensible to the oratorical utterances of the deputies,
demanded guarantees which the minister could no
longer promise, and the Assembly had more and more
taken the guidance of the machinery of government
into its own hands, so that nothing could occur with-
out its consent. According to the irrefutable testi-
mony of a Barère, France, à coups de décrets, was
governed by an Assembly both deliberative and ad-
ministrative; and, full of distrust of the ministry, he
could only describe it as un gouvernement plumitif.*
In this difficult situation Necker proposed that a
quarter of the collected revenue should patriotically
be placed at the disposal of the treasury. Credit
being exhausted, the king wished that the whole truth
should be told.†
The deputies hesitated between the alternative of
bankruptcy and the necessity of requiring such a sacri-
fice of the people, to whom they had so frequently
and solemnly promised a diminution of their burdens.
* Barère, Mémoires, i. 318, 319.
† Necker, Troisième Ministère, vii. 83.
382
MADAME DE STAËL.
Then Mirabeau arose, and in one of his most
memorable and convincing speeches carried Necker's
proposition.
Madame de Staël relates how she saw him ascend
the tribune three times on that day, and how for two
hours his marvellous eloquence held his hearers spell-
bound.
She attempts to describe it herself, but leaves off
with a quotation from the Journal de Paris: 66 "Que
seroit-ce si vous aviez vu le monstre?" Again, referring
to Mirabeau's description of the general ruin, she ends
by saying: "No one yet realized the miserable state
to which a nation could be reduced by bankruptcy,
famine, wholesale murder, the scaffold, civil war, war
with other countries, and tyranny. The mere pic-
ture Mirabeau sketched of it was then sufficiently
startling."*
Morris relates that Madame de Staël was ready in
those days not only to admire Mirabeau's attitude
but also to render thanks to him for speaking of her
father's extraordinary popularity as the reward of
eminent merit, long experience, and an unusual
knowledge of financial affairs.†
People asked each other at that time in the con-
stituante whether Necker had at last won over his
powerful opponent; or else they expressed the opinion,
subsequently shared by Madame de Staël, that he
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 315.
† Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, i. 326.
POLITICAL INTRIGUE.
383
only desired to stifle him all the quicker by the
weight of the responsibility he laid at his door.
She did not then think either idea had any found-
ation in fact. Mirabeau felt himself strong enough to
be just to Necker, especially as he was aware that he
was making his funeral oration.
very
The fact that Mirabeau soon hoped to govern
in person prevented his making all government im-
possible. His own special power over the Assembly
dates from that day when, after long resistance, it
at length yielded to the power of his word. He
had no other rival in men's favour except La Fayette,
who now stood at the head of that which was then the
only real power in France, and who gave himself up all
the more to the delusion that he commanded the
situation, from the fact that Bailly, the mayor of
Paris, had entrusted him with the actual leadership
of the police, and thus with the care of the capital,
Versailles, the Court, and the Assembly.
During these weeks he held the demagogues of the
Palais Royal in check, with the help of the Common
Council, and he apparently suppressed the Orleanist
plots. At that time Danton acted on the right
bank of the Seine as a paid agitator in the Orleanist
cause.*
The momentary check was however no improve-
ment on the situation, and was only to be ascribed
to the chance intrigues of the conflict.
The Duke of Orleans, and still more the party which
* Sybel, History of the Revolution, i. 89..
384
MADAME DE STAËL.
had taken possession of this cowardly conspirator,*
reckoned on a crime to put themselves by some means
or other in possession of the vacant sovereignty. La
Fayette did not go so far; he desired to bring the
king to Paris, there to dispose of him as a tool.† But
this space of time was not lost to the Revolution.
La Fayette, who at the head of his city militia
dispersed crowds of rebels aiming at Versailles even in
the days of the discussion of the veto, invited the Paris
commune on the 8th September to obtain reform of the
criminal code from the Assembly, and, as this was not
carried out with sufficient alacrity, he proposed the sus-
pension of all verdicts until it was done. It was time
to think of the king's safety and those belonging to him.
"All is lost," Mirabeau even then said to his friend
de la Marck; "the king and the queen will be destroyed
after this and the populace will scourge their corpses."
"Oui, on battra leurs cadavres !" he repeated, rea-
lizing the impression his words created. §
The first project of flight was the queen's. She
should go with her children to the Netherlands. ||
In the middle of September several moderate
deputies, supported by the ministers Montmorin and
La Luzerne, recommended the king to withdraw with
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 308, 309.
† Necker, De la Révolution Française, ix. 275. Sybel, Geschichte
der Revolutionzeit, 198.
La Fayette, Memoirs, ii. 294, 296. Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI.
ii. 451.
§ Bacourt, Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 112.
Wertheimer, Documents Inédits. Revue Historique, ii. 1884.
BANQUET GIVEN TO THE KING'S GUARD. 385
the Assembly, to Soissons or Compiègne, so as to
escape from the dangerous neighbourhood of Paris.*
Louis XVI. had hardly any illusions as to his own
personal situation. He had already made his will
and settled his account with Heaven on the 17th
July, before he went to Paris and repaired to the
Hotel de Ville, for he believed that he should be
butchered. But in the face of danger he possessed
that passive courage which would have saved him
had it been united to strength of will. Necker
relates that the king went to sleep, or pretended to be
asleep, when this suggestion of flight was first made
in the ministerial council. He himself could not
answer for such a project, because, he said, in the
whole land famine, uproar, and uncertainty prevailed;
and moreover there was no money left in the king's
treasury to dispose of. Bréteuil had already proposed
in August that the royal family should take refuge in
Metz, the head-quarters of Bouillé and his troops.
When La Fayette heard of it he remarked that
patriots were to be found there in equal numbers;
and that if the worst came to the worst it was better
that one should die for all.‡
In this struggle of contending plans and inten-
tions the court was satisfied to employ the Comte de
Saint-Priest, the most energetic amongst Necker's
* Malouet, Mémoires, i. 339. Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. ii. 470.
†Taine, Origines, etc. i. 69.
Thiers, Histoire de la Révolution Française, i. 109. Pièces justi-
ficatives, 409, note 8.
VOL. I.
2 c
386
MADAME DE STAËL.
1
colleagues, to request the town council to protect it
from the threatened disturbances and to summon the
Flemish regiment from Douai. It numbered about
1000 men, and even under the most favourable cir-
cumstances had it remained loyal it could have been
of no real avail. Fate had however ordained that it
should turn the scale in another direction.
The banquet in the theatre at Versailles in honour
of the officers of the regiment was followed by the
appearance of the queen and then of the king: the
distribution of the white cockade instead of that
adopted by the king on the 17th of June, the enthu-
siastic ovations for the royal family, and that whole
incautious, but so easily explained scene, out of which
a monarchy crushed to the dust found comfort in its
unheard-of humiliation, and its adherents an oppor-
tunity for the expression of feelings ennobled by
danger and oppression.
This demonstration of loyalty was
welcome to the clubs than to the court.
ceeding might promote an uproar.
even more
Such a pro-
The harvest had again been a failure and had not
Necker en-
as yet been brought to the market.
deavoured to meet the rise in prices by the purchase
of corn, more especially in England, and he succeeded
in providing at any rate for Paris to such purpose
that the price of bread remained moderate.
He could not however do away with a crowd of
about 40,000 homeless and unemployed vagabonds
* Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 95, note.
BANQUET AT VERSAILLES.
387
who lay in wait for a disturbance, nor could he hinder
Marat from describing in the Publiciste Parisien how
the Government exported the grain of the country
that it might import poisoned bread to sell at its
weight in gold.* When the news of the banquet at
Versailles reached Paris, a report was spread abroad
that the oath of the counter-revolution was in
preparation. The long smouldering hatred against
the queen burst into flames. Even amongst those
who might be called educated people the shocking
witticism went the rounds that it "needed a Marshal
Turenne (tue Reine) to save France." The patriotic
cockade supposed to have been slighted was every-
where to be seen: reports of the king's intended
flight with his family began freely to circulate.
Meanwhile on the morning of the 5th October the
king's consent to the decree of the 4th of August and
to the Declaration of the Rights of Men reached the
Assembly. But the king stipulated before giving
his final consent that the constitution should first be
completed and that the rights of the Executive should
be amply secured.
At the same time he entreated the Assembly to
desist from a sudden interruption of the course of
justice at a moment when authority neither had
sufficient power to impose taxation nor above all to
maintain order and provide for the country. In the
discussion which ensued upon these both moderate
* Hatin, Histoire du Journal en France.
† Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. iii. 19.
Laboulaye, loc. cit. 653.
2c2
388
MADAME DE STAËL.
and reasonable remarks, Mirabeau had lifted up his
voice against Robespierre on hearing that, repre-
sented by a crowd of bandits and furious women,
"Paris was marching on Versailles."
There had been no bread in some of the bakers'
shops in Paris on the morning of that day, and the
rioters inaugurated the disturbance by taking posses-
sion of the Hotel de Ville. That portion of the
National Guard represented by the rebellious Gardes
Françaises announced to La Fayette their general,
that they could not fire on the famished populace.
The latter himself prevented the unpaid city guard
from carrying out its intention, and it is stated that
the
cry which summoned the king to Paris and settled
the turn of affairs on the 6th of October, the following
day, was raised by La Fayette's soldiers.*
Thus originated the procession to Versailles to free
the king from the aristocracy and to demand bread
for the hungry populace. The ways and means
adopted by La Fayette for following with his armed
force is too characteristic to be overlooked.
It was about four o'clock on that 5th of October.
Since sunrise the tocsin had sounded, and the crowds
from the suburbs streamed past La Fayette, whose
leadership they desired, shouting "To Versailles, to
Versailles!"
The general was on horseback on the Quai de la
Grève at the head of his battalion. For hours he
contemplated the stream of men, taking apparently no
* Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 98, 99, 104, 105.
THE OCTOBER DAYS.
389
notice of the crowd and its stormy cries or else putting
them aside with plausible reasons.
Then a young man stepped from the crowd and
said, "General, you have hitherto led us, but it is
now our turn to lead you." A moment later and the
long and vainly expected order was given to go
"Forward."*
Mirabeau had warned the president of the National
Assembly at Versailles, who happened to be Mounier,
of the intended approach of the Parisian multitudes,
and had whispered to him that he should at once
adjourn the sitting and send news of it to the
palace.
On finding Mounier inclined to do nothing he
insisted more urgently, and spoke of the great danger
incurred even for the deputies. It was one of those
hours in which character prevails over intellectual
superiority. "So much the better," replied Mounier;
"if they find us all here and kill us; but All, it must
be understood. The Republic will prosper all the
better for it." The Faust of the Revolution had
nothing to reply, and the 6th of October dawned.
Madame de Staël witnessed this day. When she
heard in the morning what was going on she hurried
by quiet roads to join her parents at Versailles. On
her way she met the king's hunt, recalled in breath-
Sainte-Beuve, La Fayette. Portraits Littéraires, ii. 141. From
the verbal account of a National Guardsman who was present.
† Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. iii. 32. Dareste, Histoire de France,
vii. 290. Lanzac de Laborie, J. J. Mounier, 212, 213.
390
MADAME DE STAËL.
less haste from the woods of Meudon to the palace.
When she herself reached it Necker was with the
king. She found her mother in one of the ante-rooms
leading to the royal apartments, in deadly anxiety for
her husband, but resolved to share his lot.
Late in
Others besides Madame de Staël resorted one after
another in countless numbers to Versailles.
the afternoon, and much against his own convictions,
Mounier came, on the part of the Assembly, to demand
from the king an unconditional recognition of the
Rights of Men. In relating the circumstance, Madame
de Staël remarks that nothing excited the anger of
the French so much as any attempt at resistance on
the part of the weaker side, and that on the other
hand they had become so accustomed to the necessity
of the king's intervention that they were capable
of asking his consent to the establishment of a
Republic.
In the Versailles ante-rooms she heard discussions
around her as to whether the king should fly or
remain, whether he should offer resistance, or with-
draw to one of the provinces. Later information
and discoveries on this point have corroborated the
assertion made by Madame de Staël, that amongst the
ministers, Cicé, Montmorin, and Necker were inclined
to assent to La Fayette's proposition that for the
future the king should reside in the capital. Saint-
Priest was alone in advising flight to Rambouillet,
and declared that if Louis XVI. consented to being
taken to Paris his crown was lost to him. "That is
ACCOUNT OF THE SIXTH OF OCTOBER.
391
a piece of advice," Necker replied, "that may cost
you your head."*
Those who were about the king said that he hesi-
tated to fly, being certain that the National Assembly
would replace him by the Duke of Orleans: a fear
which Madame de Staël considered to be groundless
both then and later.
Moreover she was convinced that even a military
following could not avail to save the king, so over-
whelming was the revolutionary spirit.
Thus nothing was decided in face of the approach-
ing calamity, and those resident in the palace looked
out upon the surrounding avenues with the full know-
ledge that the first shots would be directed thence
towards the windows of the hall they were in. "But
although the anxiety was universal not even a woman
thought of leaving."
At three o'clock the first horde of women had
reached the Assembly, and the well-known events
took place in the courtyard at Versailles, when M. de
Chinon, afterwards Duc de Richelieu, for once regard-
less of etiquette, rushed pale and dishevelled into the
royal presence.
He had joined the surging populace in the capital
to learn their plans, and half-way to Versailles had
hurried on in front to bring news of them to the
royal family. He gave a frightful description of
what was to be expected. He described the women
* Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 98. Duchesse de Tourzel,
Mémoires, i. 8.
392
MADAME DE STAËL.
to be more intoxicated with wine than with passion,
the men to be the dregs of the people, boasting of
the murders they had committed and still hoped to
commit. Anxiety went on increasing as darkness
closed in, and the reports from without became more
and more contradictory, until at length at eleven at
night the news spread as a message of deliverance
that La Fayette with the National Guard had arrived.
Madame de Staël saw the general on his way to
the king, surrounded on every side and beset with
questions, as if he still were master of the situation
and not a leader taken possession of by the people.
"He seemed as composed as ever," she writes.
"When he returned from the king's rooms he restored
the courage of those present by such cheerful re-
assurances that towards midnight, everyone being ex-
hausted to the uttermost, retired by degrees, imagin-
ing the danger to have passed.*
Thus began a night unsurpassed by any other
during the Revolution, the tragic history of which
has been summed up by an irreconcilable opponent
in these words: "Monsieur de la Fayette a dormi
contre son roi." "General Morpheus," Rivarol called
him in jest, when the first horror had passed over.
Madame de Staël had also retired at last with her
parents and gone to rest.
Next morning she was awoke at early dawn by the
mother of the Comte Choiseul-Gouffier, an elderly
* Lanzac de Laborie, J. J. Mounier, 222, 223. Exposé de la Con-
duite de M. Mounier, 69-92.
ACCOUNT OF THE SIXTH OF OCTOBER.
393
lady, who, although unknown to her, had come to
implore her to save her. From her she first learnt
that the hordes had made their way into the palace
by an unprotected door, that the body-guard had
been massacred, and that a mere chance had saved
the queen from a similar fate.
Dressing hastily, Madame de Staël was told that
Necker had already gone to the king, and that her
mother was preparing to follow him. It has already
been mentioned that the royal apartments were con-
nected with the Contrôle Général by a long corridor.
Madame de Staël could hear the report of firearms in
the courtyard as she passed hurriedly along. There
were signs of bloodshed all over the great gallery ;
in the neighbouring hall the body-guard were frater-
nising in great excitement with the Gardes Françaises,
exchanging their cockades and shouting "Long live
La Fayette!" whilst the latter was meanwhile endea-
vouring to save the life of those who had so nar-
rowly escaped the carnage.
From the adjacent hall the howling, shrieking crowd
might be seen letting off firearms and shouting the
queen's name. Suddenly the door of a side-chamber
opened and she appeared; her hair in disorder, pale
as death, but dignified: "An apparition eminently
calculated to take hold of the imagination." She
heard how the people without, in the so-called marble-
court, called for her. The men were all armed, most of
them carried pistols or firearms. That which Marie
Antoinette had to confront might be read in their
394
MADAME DE STAËL.
faces. Nevertheless she stepped on to the balcony
leading her two children by the hand.
The ensuing scene has been described a thousand
times; it has inspired historians, poets, loyalists and
republicans. Nothing can however surpass the im-
pression made upon immediate eye-witnesses who,
like Madame de Staël, saw the deadly fury of this
crowd change first into silent astonishment and next
into stormy admiration.
Just at that time the relations between Necker and
La Fayette were of the friendliest, and both Madame
de Staël and her father exert themselves to exonerate
him from any blame in the occurrences of these
October days,* whilst neither had any cause to be
pleased with the queen's conduct towards them. The
strength of character shown by the latter on that
morning made, however, such an impression upon
Madame de Staël that she never speaks of the part
played on it by La Fayette. She only relates that
the queen on returning into the hall went towards
Madame Necker, and that, in a voice choked with
tears, she said, "They want to force the king and
me to go back to Paris, and to carry the heads of our
faithful guards in front of us."
A few hours later, whilst the funeral procession of
the monarchy wended its way to Paris, Madame de
Staël and her family reached the capital by a
shorter route through the Bois de Boulogne. She
* Necker, De la Révolution Française, ix. 273. Madame de Staël,
Considérations, xii. 341.
MOUNIER QUITS THE ASSEMBLY.
395
says the weather was exquisite, there was not a
breath of air, and the sight of everything tinged with
golden sunshine only made the contrast more glaring
between this smiling nature and all that had occurred.
Next day she again saw the queen, who received
the diplomatic corps and the court circle at the
Tuileries, which was so little prepared for her that
camp-beds had to be put up in the reception room
for the royal children. The queen could hardly speak
for sobbing, and, says Madame de Staël, "none of us
were in a condition to answer her. Her beautiful
features expressed both grief and vexation. Those
who saw her thus could never forget her."
Others besides the members of the royal family
were made prisoners by the populace. A fortnight
later the National Assembly followed them to Paris.
"After it had triumphed by means of the people it
neither had the right nor the power to restrain it, and
nothing remained but to acknowledge its mastery."*
Only those formed an exception whose inward
indignation at what had happened was stronger
than their political cleverness. The leaders of the
constitutional party-Mounier, Lally Tollendal, La
Luzerne, and with him perhaps a hundred and twenty
deputies, who in turn tendered their resignation and
ceased to attend the sittings-gave up the game as lost.
Mounier went to Grenoble, "firmly determined to
protect his province from the decrees of the National
* Necker, De la Révolution Française..
396
MADAME DE STAËL.
Assembly, and rather to foster civil war and give a
hand in the dismembering of France than to obey
under such conditions."*
La Fayette acknowledged subsequently that he
could not blame Burke, Mounier, J. Adams, and all
the most enlightened public men with them, if they
described France as a Republic after the October days.†
But at that time he tried to divert Mounier from
his intention, for he wrote to him that he was himself
well aware of his own great responsibility. This did
not however discourage him or prevent his devoting
his whole heart to the people. He should continue
to fight against the aristocracy, despotism, and the
factions with equal zeal. The faults and mistakes of
the National Assembly were well known to him; he
hated tyranny represented by an individual; but he
was convinced of the necessity of strengthening the
Executive even to an extent beyond what Mounier
could imagine.‡
The answer given by Mounier to this confession,
so little in harmony with his correspondent's line of
conduct, was an attempt to affect a rising in
Dauphiné. What especially induced him to take
this step, which has so often been called a tactical
mistake, by Madame de Staël as well as by others, §
* Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-
Holstein, 140, 141. Dépêche No. 136, Oct. 22, 1789. Madame de
Staël, Considérations, xii. 249.
† La Fayette, Mémoires, iii. 193.
‡ Idem, ii. 418.
§ Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii, 349.
1.
THE END OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHISTS. 397
was his conviction, at that time loudly expressed,
that Mirabeau was to blame for the October days,
but this was not confirmed by subsequent testimony.*
When at length Mounier realized how vain was his
attempt to call a reaction to life against the capital in
the provinces, in favour of liberty and order, he gave
up his mandate, and retired into banishment, first to
Switzerland and then to Weimar, where he earned
his livelihood as a schoolmaster. The pamphlet he
wrote in description of his share in events, and of
his disappointments, is a valuable contribution to our
knowledge of the Revolution.† Although they pos-
sessed no greater confidence in the future than
Mounier, some of his friends and partisans, Clermont-
Tonnerre and Malouet amongst the deputies, and
Mallet du Pan in the press, took a different view of
their duty.
They determined to stick to their posts although
they considered the cause a lost one. Known at
first by the name of Les Impartiaux, then during
the latter times of the National Assembly as the Con-
stitutionalists, these men redeemed their promise,
until persecution again united them on foreign soil to
those who had been their companions in arms in 1789,
or until it in many cases exacted the sacrifice of their
lives.
* Mounier, Appel au tribunal de l'opinion publique, directed aganist
Mirabeau. Lanzac de Laborie, Mounier, 252, 253.
† Mounier, Recherches sur les causes qui ont empêché les Français
de devenir libres. 1792.
398
MADAME DE STAËL.
The ideas they represented were however to out-
live them, and the struggle of the constitutional
monarchists may thus be considered within the limits
of a biography of Madame de Staël. Five-and-
twenty years of mistakes, of terror, and civil war, the
seductive victory of imperialism and its fearful retri-
bution, followed the shipwreck of the teaching they
represented.
Then after "catastrophes which had called the
interests of the human race into question"* there
was a return to the starting-point and to the theories
which the best intellects of the eighteenth century had
considered worthy of attainment.
The political importance of Madame de Staël rests
upon the circumstance that her experience in later
years cleared up the traditions in which she had been
brought up, and purified and freed them from many
illusions.
The woman, the authoress, has her own especial
story. Her chief historical merit lies in the fact that
she was a spiritual link in the chain of a great deliver-
ance, and that, with masculine courage, she imparted
the liberal opinions she had preserved through twelve
years of persecution to a race bred up under despotic
pressure.
* Mounier, Recherches, etc., last chapter.
CHAPTER VII.
France after the October Days-Mirabeau-Ministerial Combinations
-Close of the year 1789-The three great Political Problems of
1790-Institution of the Clubs in 1789-Necker and the Financial
Situation-Appropriation of Church Property-The Court and
Mirabeau-Abolition of Titles-Civil Constitution of the Clergy
—Anniversary of the 14th of July-The Jacobins-New Issue
of Assignats-Death of Mirabeau, 1790-Necker's Book upon
the Executive.
AFTER those days in October, intrigue reigned supreme
in France. The first victim to the altered situation
was the Duke of Orleans, La Fayette having collected
sufficient proofs of his perfidy to get rid of the prince.
Huber, Necker's relative, writes to Morton Eden, the
English diplomatist, that the general went to the
duke on the 10th of October, and said to him: "Mon-
seigneur, I fear that a personage of your name will
soon lose his head on the scaffold."
Then as the individual thus accosted stared at him
in astonishment, La Fayette added: "You intended
to have me murdered; be assured that one hour after,
you yourself would be overtaken by the same fate."
Upon this the duke protested innocence: the general
replied that he was of course obliged to accept his
400
MADAME DE STAËL.
word of honour, but that he possessed such proofs
against him that he must either leave France in four-
and-twenty hours or appear before the law-courts.
La Fayette next said: "The king has come down a
few of the steps of his throne, but I have taken up
my position on the last step. He cannot go further,
and any one wishing to reach him would have to pass
over my body. You have a grievance against the
queen, so have I, but at this moment we must forget
all injuries."* On the 14th October the duke received
his passport under the pretext of a political mission
on behalf of the king, and on the same day he started
on a journey to London, which removed him in the
meantime from the scene of action. He was accom-
panied by his confidential friend Choderlos de Laclos,
the author of many bad novels, one of which, Les
liaisons dangereuses, anticipates the style of Zola.
Years after the fate had befallen Philippe d'Orléans
that he himself had invoked, the most crushing
evidence against him was discovered in his own hand-
writing. This was the letter to his banker, so often
subsequently quoted, ordering him to refrain from
paying certain moneys as "L'argent n'est point
gagné, le marmot vit encore.”†
The same Duke of Orleans, speaking of Mirabeau,
* Lord Auckland, Journal and Correspondence, ii. 364. M. Huber
to Mr. Eden, Paris, Oct. 15, 1789. Bacourt, Correspondance entre
Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 126.
+ Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 105, note. Ducoin,
Philippe d'Orleans, 72.
FRANCE AFTER THE OCTOBER DAYS.
401
A
had said that the latter had nothing to lose.*
similar thought appeared to be at the root of the
accusation brought against Mirabeau. not only by
his opponents on the right, not only by Mounier
or by Necker, but also by La Fayette, although he
opened negociations with him a very few days after-
wards.+
There were certainly sufficient grounds for suspicion
against him in the past. Without reference to the
events of the 14th of July, it was only necessary to
recall how in the first days of October he had engaged
to denounce all the promoters of the "sacrilegious
orgie" at Versailles on condition only that the king's
person should be unharmed; all others compromised
therein should however be answerable before the law;
words which the queen was not singular in thinking
were meant by Mirabeau as a threat against her
life; although impartial research, which must decide
between the statesmenlike thoughts and intentions,
the passionate outbursts in his career, and the blame-
able concessions to the false idol of the day, has
found nothing to prove his complicity or to increase
the weight of his responsibility for those events in
October.
His attitude afterwards was certainly not that of a
man who feared publicity. He did not conceal from
himself the increase of power and influence La Fayette
had acquired by the removal of the Duke of Orleans.
*Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 129.
† Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. ii. 342, note.
VOL. I.
2 D
402
MADAME DE STAËL.
To counterbalance this, although the public considered
him to have been his accomplice, he boldly offered to
defend the duke in the National Assembly, and this
to La Fayette's cost. The proposal came to nothing,
as it was refused by the Duke of Orleans, who pre-
ferred to withdraw himself to England, and by secret
flight to escape the threats of the one party and the
scarcely less dangerous offers of the other.* Soon
afterwards the investigating committee established by
the Parisian town council entrusted the law-courts
of the Châtelet with the enquiry into events which it
characteristically called the "misdemeanours of the
6th of October." The Paris commune was then
entirely under the influence of La Fayette, and his
name protected the operations of that day. When,
after an investigation of ten months, the Châtelet, in
1790, demanded the judicial prosecution, not only of
the Duc d'Orléans but of Mirabeau, the testimony
against the latter was so feeble that even Maury
acknowledged the fact, and La Fayette as the best
informed person on the subject promised Mirabeau
that he would make the real state of matters known
to the National Assembly. But when the day came La
Fayette did not appear, and Mirabeau wrote to de la
Marck, "I could have branded La Fayette irrevocably;
I had hitherto intended to leave history to do it. I
* Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. iii. 44, 127.
+ Maxime de la Rochetrie, Les Journées du 5-6 Octobre, 1789.
Revue des Questions Historiques, xiv. 1873.
‡ Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. iii. 274.
PART PLAYED BY MIRABEAU AND LA FAYETTE. 403
did not do it, and contented myself with unsheath-
ing my sword without striking a blow. Time will do
it for me."
This prophecy was fulfilled. These very letters
between Mirabeau and de la Marck, and the accounts
written by the latter, justify him as much as they
condemn La Fayette. De la Marck has no less
convincingly established that La Fayette, with whom
he spent a part of the night between the 5th and 6th
of October, was perfectly aware of the fate awaiting
the Gardes du Corps, and that he nevertheless
treacherously assured the Count Montmorin that
nothing would disturb that night, and thereupon
went to bed, instead of taking measures to protect
them.* Supported by these documents the German
historian of the Revolution accuses La Fayette not
only of calling forth the cry "The King to Paris,"
on the 5th of October, but of encouraging the panic
by introducing it at Versailles, before it had actually
been raised in the capital.†
If any one still desires to believe in the chivalrous
loyalty of La Fayette they must find a better plea
for him than the ambiguous apology tendered by
Rivarol, who, although not fully aware of the part he
* Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 115-
119.
† Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 97-106, but we find that
Droz states it to have been raised several times in Paris. Histoire de
Louis XVI. ii. 344, and iii. 18.
2 D 2
404
MADAME DE STAËL.
had played during the October days, still remarked
that a lack of understanding in certain cases is often
accompanied by all the results of a vicious disposi-
tion.* The royal family had hardly been twenty-
four hours in Paris when Mirabeau implored de la
Marck to convince Louis XVI. that he and his family,
and France into the bargain, were lost if they did not
leave the capital as soon as possible. His memorial
of the 15th of October was written from this point of
view. It is full of the idea that neither the king nor
the Assembly was safe or free in Paris, and that
incalculable danger lay in the future, seeing that the
capital, given up to agiotage and anarchy, was hurry-
ing both itself and the nation to its ruin. A nation
was principally to be valued by the amount of work it
accomplished, and France had become unused to
work. Thus ran a remarkable portion of the letter.
No help was to be expected from the irreconcilable
elements which composed the Assembly. It had
itself closed the way back to daylight when it pro-
nounced its decrees to be irrevocable.
But
Necker is the only minister mentioned.
he too was "un seul qui toujours eut plutôt des
enthousiastes qu'un parti; .
.... et ce financier de-
structeur ne laisse un souffle à Paris qu'en ruinant le
royaume."
A return to the former state of things was impos-
* Lescure, Rivarol, 223.
MIRABEAU'S MEMORIAL TO THE KING.
405
sible. If the king went to the frontiers, to Metz, he
would separate himself from the nation and might
abdicate. No less dangerous would be an appeal to
the nobility; the abolition of feudalism was the
expiation of ten centuries of irregularities. The
people did not however as yet know the difference
between the nobles and the patriciate, and would
mercilessly extirpate the nobility if its help were
sought in any way to effect a reaction. The only
means of salvation lay in the completion and establish-
ment of the Revolution by the closest union between
the king and the people. To this end the king,
after establishing the necessary military organisation,
should leave the capital in the full daylight, and
betake himself to Rouen in the heart of Normandy,
and from thence call upon the provinces to oppose the
tyranny of the capital, summon the Assembly to join
him, and appoint a national convention to complete
the constitution, and to alter and improve anything
in it which appeared impracticable.
The difficulty of the plan was thought no objection;
some risk must be incurred to avoid a great danger;
a crisis was inevitable.*
Recent events had so prejudiced the queen against
Mirabeau that there could be no chance of her inter-
vention on behalf of his propositions. Therefore his
memorial was entrusted to the Duc de Provence, and
it is by no means proved that it ever reached the
*
Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i, 365.
406
MADAME DE STAËL.
king.
De la Marck emphatically speaks to the
contrary. Mirabeau did not even shrink from the
possibility of civil war. When Dumont pointed out
that the memorial would give the sign for it, he did
not know, Mirabeau said, how greatly France still
depended on the king's person, and how thoroughly
monarchical was the mind of the nation. If La
Fayette (Cromwell Grandison, as he had derisively
named him since the 6th of October) wanted to play
the part of Washington, he deserved to come to grief.
To de la Marck he also said that civil war renewed
the spirit and revived the energy that corrupt morals
had destroyed. France could always be managed by
the prospect of gold or of place. If one or the other
might be expected of the king his party would soon
have the upper hand, and Mirabeau likewise saw
that nothing could be done until a strong energetic
ministry was established at the head of affairs.
Each day brought new combinations. As far back
as the beginning of September the deputy for Aix had
used the Courier de Provence to demand that the
Assembly should withdraw its resolution debarring
the ministers from attending deliberations. The
affair then remained for some time in abeyance, but
in the course of October Mirabeau attacked the
ministry in a way that left no further doubt of its
weakness and incapacity. At the same time he again
entered into negociations with Necker, and afterwards
* Dumont, Souvenir sur Mirabeau, 164.
MIRABEAU ENTERS INTO RELATIONS WITH LA Fayette. 407
with Cicé, archbishop of Bordeaux, and allowed La
Fayette to take him to Montmorin. Their views
differed; enmity and mutual distrust complicated the
negociations.
Talleyrand, the Staëls' friend, was of opinion that
no administration could work well, in which M. Necker
had a share. His removal was a sine qua non; as to
La Fayette, he had no fixed plan.* Internal dissen-
sion had long reigned in the Government; Cicé had
intrigued for months against Necker; Saint-Priest,
the most energetic of the ministers, was not to be
relied upon.
Montmorin was well-intentioned but
had no strength of will. Necker again tried to come
to an understanding with Mirabeau without having to
work with him. He made La Fayette offer him the
post of ambassador to England or to Holland, and
place a sum of fifty thousand francs at his disposal,
to help him out of his most pressing pecuniary diffi-
culties. But Mirabeau desired to see pecuniary offers
justified by a great position. He refused everything
except a sum of money, which was however returned
immediately. As far back as the middle of October
Mirabeau was so exasperated by Necker's attitude
that he now completely went over to La Fayette,
and by his means the threads of intrigue reached the
queen. He ministered to the vanity of the com-
mandant by procuring the triumph of an ovation for
* Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, i. 335.
† Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 353-387, 395,
396.
408
MADAME DE STAËL.
him and Bailly from the Assembly, on the occasion
of its first sitting being held in Paris. He then forced
the dictator, as La Fayette was now called, to form
a ministry which would be quite under his control.
The note written by him, and noticed as early as the
12th of October by Morris, reconstructs the cabinet
with Necker as Prime Minister, "That he may thus
be as powerless as he is incapable, but that the
remains of his popularity may continue to be of
service to the king."
Cicé was selected as Chancellor, and Liancourt as
War Minister, being the king's personal friend. De
la Marck was entrusted with the naval administration;
Talleyraud with the Exchequer. Mirabeau entered
the Government without a portfolio, and La Fayette
as Marshal of France and Generalissimo, with a com-
mission to reorganise the army. Nor was Mounier
forgotten. The project was to unite every kind of
capacity. In a second note Talleyrand was appointed
to the Foreign Office, Sièyes to the Educational
department.*
Always convinced that Paris was the great hot-bed
of anarchy, Mirabeau had tried to put the means for
a strong rule into the hands of the new Government
directly after the 6th of October by proposing a power-
ful military law for the capital only. Talleyrand's
proposal to seize the Church property dated from the
Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 411, 412.
Malouet, Mémoires, i. 373.
MINISTERIAL COMBINATIONS.
409
10th October, and a book written by Puységur further
stirred up excitement on the same subject.*
Mirabeau was perfectly aware of the connection
between this step and the current course of affairs,
and had also most emphatically promised a portfolio
as the reward of the promoter of it, so that were these
transactions successful the four milliards, at which the
property belonging to the Church was reckoned, †
would become at the same time the forfeit that Talley-
rand paid to the Revolution on entering its service.
In Mirabeau's opinion the Church of France was lost,
but he approved as little of this violent measure as
he had approved of the deeds of the 4th of August or
those of the October days; and after it had been
carried out by the Assembly he called it the most
deadly blow that had ever been dealt to the nation.
After the impulse had been given by another, he sup-
ported the motion that the Church property should be
placed at the disposal of the nation on condition that
a totally separate administration should secure it to
be hypothecated for the purpose of paying off some
portion of the floating debt in bonds. It was in the
course of these financial discussions that Mirabeau
thought the time had come for taking a decisive step.
On the 6th of November he brought forward the
* Jules Simon, Une Académie sous le Directoire, after Bachaumont,
Mémoires secrètes v. 148.
† Taine, Origines, etc. L'Ancien Régime, 18, 19.
Mirabeau to Mauvillon. Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i.
114. Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 358.
410
MADAME DE STAËL.
triple proposal that peace should be secured to Paris
by accumulating corn; that the national debt should
in future be managed by a separate administration,
and, before any debate arose on the subject, that a
place and a voice in the Assembly should be allotted
to the ministers.
He had reason to hope that, notwithstanding the
opposition of the Right and of the Extreme Left, he
should be able to win the votes of his other colleagues
by the power of his word if the court, the ministry,
and, above all, La Fayette, by his influence with the
Moderate Left, would support him. In this expecta-
tion he was disappointed. In Mirabeau's proposal
people only saw the danger of his own rise to power.
The Left opposed the motion by an adjournment; and
next day, the 7th of November, Lanjuinais, one of "the
most honourable and at the same time one of the most
foolish men in France," * brought forward the great
name of Montesquieu in support of a theory which he
entirely misunderstood, and completed the rejection
of the motion. He did not for an instant try to
conceal how little weight one of the most important
constitutional questions had in bringing about this
decision, when he addressed the Assembly in the
following terms: "His persuasive genius carries you
along with it, and governs you. What would he not
venture to do, if he were minister ? "
"*
In vain did Mirabeau retort with cutting irony
*Niebuhr, Geschichte der Zeitalters der Revolution, i. 226.
MIRABEAU'S PROPOSAL OF THE SIXTH OF NOVEMBER. 411
that the Assembly might pass the motion, and leave
him and his opponent Lanjuinais out of the question
if only it might be carried out. Maury and d'Espré-
ménil, Sièyes and Montlosier, Dupont and Robes-
pierre, Lameth and Barnave, all found themselves
suddenly in agreement. The battle was lost, and
with it the Monarchy.*
In indignant wrath, Mirabeau made Necker answer-
able, and next to him Cicé, for the change in the
opinions of the hitherto irresolute deputies between
the nights of the 6th and 7th of November. But he
was soon convinced that the individual really to
blame was no other than he, who had not kept his
engagements with him on a former occasion, namely,
General La Fayette.†
Even after the decision of the 7th November, Mira-
beau did not give up the game as entirely lost; if he
really were necessary, he used to assert, he could and
would attain power. For the Assembly must with-
draw the decree concerning the minister if the Revo-
lution were to be established. To establish an enduring
union between the monarchy and the people after the
annihilation of the clergy and the banding together
of the nobility another disturbance must occur; the
parlements must be sacrificed. Enough would then
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 350. Bacourt, Correspond-
ance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 130. Droz, Histoire de Louis
XVI. 64, etc.
† Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 423. Mirabeau
to La Fayette.
412
MADAME DE STAËL.
have been accomplished, and the regeneration of the
king's authority must begin.
In so far as this programme was intended to be a
work of destruction, it succeeded easily enough.
On the 3rd of November A. de Lameth, although
one of Mirabeau's most decided political antagonists,
proposed to adjourn the parlements indefinitely, and,
as he expressed it, "to bury them alive." Until
the constitution had instituted a new mode of proce-
dure, Mirabeau helped to stifle the last protestations
of the condemned "aristocratic magistracy" in one
of his forcible speeches on the 9th of January, 1790,
and it was in the intermediate space of time that
Mirabeau tried to bring La Fayette to an energetic
decision. The idea arose of making the Comte de
Provence the ministerial president, but this was soon
given up as the prince showed that he could not be
depended upon; moreover, in Mirabeau's opinion, he
was quite unfit for it, whilst his friend Dumont
declared himself of the opinion that the Marquis de
Favras had heroically gone to the scaffold a victim
to the personal plans of the prince. It proved just as
difficult to bring La Fayette to the point. His self-
confidence had increased in proportion as everything
tottered around him. Not only did he speak of the
advantage it was to know the king to be safe in the
Tuileries, but he thought himself more than ever in
a position to command the capital, since the murder
of a baker had obliged the National Assembly to
CLOSE OF THE YEAR 1789.
413
decree a martial law for the whole of France similar
to that required by Mirabeau for Paris alone; as long
as he appeared to be able to govern the capital he
thought he could also give a direction to the Revo-
lution. It flattered bis vanity to be courted by
Mirabeau and to work with him, but, failing to
recognise the extreme danger of the situation, he
rocked himself in treacherous safety and was all the
more unwilling to share with another the power he
imagined himself to possess. The Duc de Orléans
was sent out of the way; Monsieur compromised ;
Necker's influence at an end; the king in his power.
He did not fear Mirabeau because he utterly despised
him; he considered Lameth to be a schemer; Barnave
and Dupont to have no political capacity.*
In January 1790 he informed Morris, to his
no small astonishment, that, notwithstanding many
blunders, the National Assembly had completed a
constitution that was "beyond comparison superior
to the English." The letter addressed to Mounier
dated October 23rd was only a gleam of a better
insight, the basis of his views remained revolutionary
throughout.t
On the eve of the 6th of November Mirabeau had
written to his friend de la Marck that he had seen
through La Fayette, and that he found him quite as
* La Fayette, Mémoires, ii. 443-458. Jared Sparks, Gouverneur
Morris, i. 338. Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du
Baron de Staël-Holstein, 154. Depêche No. 145.
† See Chapter VI.
414
MADAME DE STAËL.
incapable of breaking his promise as of keeping his
word at the right moment. Hardly four weeks after-
wards he wrote to La Fayette, whilst smarting under
the bitterest disappointment, that he had vainly
warned him against the rocks upon which he would
be the first to be dashed to pieces.
position, pursued by his irresolution, and his pre-
ference for useless half-measures as by a fate, he
would drag himself and the State with him to
destruction.*
Blinded by his
During the next months Mirabeau was compara-
tively inactive. He was deeply discouraged. He
might master his enemies, but he acutely felt that
his own past could not be undone, and that he must
bleed to death from the wounds he had inflicted upon
himself.
Thus amidst mutual enmity, distrust, and plots, the
year 1789 came to an end;-the Baron de Staël and
his wife sharing all its excitement and chances to the
last. The Swedish ambassador is constantly mentioned
as one of those who frequented the conferences at La
Fayette's house.†
In describing the life and movement in the French
salons, and their influence on the questions of the
day, Morris, who was ever an attentive observer,
draws attention to the Swedish embassy. He had
*Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 417, 423,
424.
† Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, i. 328.
MORRIS CONCERNING MADAME DE STAËL.
415
He ap-
mnade acquaintance with Madame de Staël in the
autumn at the Countess Tessé's house.
proached her with prejudices which were never alto-
gether dissipated. He was not only displeased by the
coquettish manners of the young ambassadress ;
he thought her whole demeanour too self-conscious
and decided. Morris was not likely to sympathise in
her adoration of Necker, as he himself says. When
he heard her say that wisdom was a rare quality, and
that she knew of no one who possessed it in a
superlative degree excepting her father, the assertion
seemed to the American to proceed from the most exu-
berant vanity.* But he was soon obliged to confess
that she was a woman of wonderful wit, and above
vulgar prejudices of every kind. "Her house," he
writes in January 1790, to Washington, "is a kind
of Temple of Apollo, where the men of wit and fashion
are collected twice a week at supper, and once at
dinner, and sometimes more frequently. The Count
de Clermont-Tonnerre, one of their greatest orators,
read us a very pathetic oration, and the object was to
show that penalties are the legal compensations for
injuries and crimes; the man who is hanged, having
by that event paid his debt to society, ought not to
be held in dishonour; and in like manner he who has
been condemned for seven years to be flogged in the
gallies should, when he had served out his apprentice-
ship, be received again into good company as if
nothing had happened. You smile, but observe the
* Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, i. 335.
416
MADAME DE STAËL.
extreme to which the matter was carried the other
way. Dishonouring thousands for the guilt of one
has so shocked the public sentiment as to render this
extreme fashionable. The oration was very fine, very
sentimental, very pathetic, and the style harmonious.
Shouts of applause and full approbation. When this
was pretty well over I told him that his speech was
extremely eloquent but that his principles were not
very solid. Universal surprise! A very few remarks
changed the face of things. The position was uni-
versally condemned, and he left the room. I need
not add, that, as yet, it has never been delivered in
the Assembly. And yet it was of the kind that
produces a decree by acclamation; for sometimes
an orator gets up in the midst of another deliberation,
makes a fine discourse, and closes with a good snug
resolution which is carried with a huzza. Thus, in
considering a plan for a national bank proposed by
M. Necker, one of them took it into his head to move
that every member should give his silver buckles,
which was agreed to at once, and the honourable
mover laid his upon the table."*
A more striking example was at his disposal had he
remembered to quote the letter from a courtesan to
the constituante, stating that she had been able to
save sums of money which she now placed at the
disposal of her country. Whereupon the Assembly
decided to make honourable mention of the female in
* Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, ii. 90. Morris to Washington,
Paris, Jan. 21, 1790.
THE THREE GREAT POLITICAL PROBLEMS IN 1790. 417
question, and Condorcet rejoiced over the destruction
of prejudice, which restored actors and individuals
like the letter-writer to the arms of their country.*
This apparently incredible tone of thought and this
excitable turn of mind led the witty Duc de Lévis
to remark that where soldiers ruled, and judges were
politicians, where literary men legislated, and abbés
administered finance, confusion had reached such a
pitch that no one was left to laugh at it.† Under
these circumstances it was by no means a matter of
indifference into which scale fell the weight of the
personal opinion and judgment of clever, lively
women.
Madame de Staël busied herself greatly with the
three great questions occupying the constituante
during the winter and spring of 1790-the re-division
of France into eighty-three departments, the abolition
of the parlements, and the seizure of Church property
by the State. She showed herself inclined to adopt
the opinions of her friend Talleyrand, whereas her
father belonged to the few who, with the Jansenist
advocate Camus, maintained and defended the rights
of the clergy. Appealing to the argument used by
Thouret and Chapelier, she asks by what right man
can exact that his institutions shall endure perman-
* Condorcet, Mémoires, ii. 36. Paris, 1824.
† Duc de Lévis, Souvenirs et Portraits, 1780-1789, 99. Paris,
1819.
‡ De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même, vi. 142,276; and
his memorial to the king, May, 1790.
VOL. I.
2 E
418
MADAME DE STAËL.
ently? and how it can be possible to search in the
obscurity of past ages for title-deeds which are no
longer authentic, and to expect them to be accepted?*
Sympathy with the injustice thus endured was the
point on which she-a Protestant--agreed with the
Revolution. That she was a member of a Church
which had long endured bitter persecution was not
the only reason for this. As she openly admitted at
a later period, she could not forget that the happiness
of her own life had been shipwrecked by the fact
that marriage with non-Catholics was forbidden by
the Church. Where Necker made personal motives
of this kind a reason for reserve, and thus came to a
fairer decision, his daughter seized on the history of
the religious persecutions, on that of the Cevennes
wars and of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
to make the foremost representative of the French
Church-to make Bossuet responsible for the combi-
nation of intolerance with despotism, and to deprive
the Church to which he belonged of her rights and
privileges in the State. Intolerant as this conclusion
was in itself, Madame de Staël nevertheless fully recog-
nised that one of the chief causes for the diminution
of religion in France lay in "the union of dogma and
privilege," in the confusion of the articles of faith
with the political creed.† Her sincere love of liberty
drew her back to the right path when the attack on
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 355, 362. Jared Sparks,
Gouverneur Morris, i. 335.
† Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 299, 355, etc.
NECKER'S VIEWS CEASE TO HAVE WEIGHT. 419
the clergy no longer concerned their property or
worldly honours but their conscience.
In her later records, as in her personal attitude
during the year 1790, although she may not herself
have been aware of it, the withdrawal of the influence
of Necker's views made itself gradually felt. Whilst
he found himself more and more relegated to play
the part of a passive spectator after filling the first
place in the State, it was only natural that, although
Madame de Staël continued to look up to her father
with undiminished admiration, she should nevertheless
be possessed by the current ideas arising from the
pressing necessity for an independent effort towards
the social salvation which an overthrown government
could no longer accomplish.
For every
administration was condemned to inaction
by the decree of the 7th of November; on the one
hand the Assembly refused to give the king ministers
from its midst; and on the other hand it fancied
it could govern, although unable to command obe-
dience. That which followed was inevitable. A crowd
of officials spread over France who virtually depended
on the National Assembly alone. The right of election
was worked upon every conceivable system during the
whole period of the Revolution, and almost amounted
to universal suffrage, as it embraced four million
active citizens, although, by maintaining a small
census on the wages of three working days, the Con-
stitution of 1791 refused to grant the full equality
2E2
420
MADAME DE STAËL.
dreamt of in the Rights of Man.*
Thus even in
1789 those who possessed nothing acquired power and
the resolve to employ it against property. Owing to
the sudden and unrestricted freedom of the Press, and
the equally unconditional right to hold meetings, the
clubs and journals now became the real leaders of
public affairs. The Breton club, still led by the trium-
virate formed by Duport, Lameth and Barnave, had
assembled since October in the Jacobin monastery in
Paris, and the same Duport who had armed Paris,
again gave proof of his talent for organising disorder
by providing himself with agents and combinations
in the departments, which, under the name of patriotic
associations, operated in conjunction with his club in
Paris, kept up the ferment and stirred up passion;
organising a system, both of espionage and of propa-
ganda, which made it so impossible for quiet and
circumspect citizens to exist, that the members and
adherents of the club in the capital soon became the
real masters of the situation, until they eventually fell
into the hands of their successors and deadly enemies,
the Jacobins. Madame de Staël compares this club to
a mine which might cause an explosion at any moment.†
In April, 1790, an attempt was indeed made to
counteract it by another; by the club founded by La
Fayette, Bailly, La Rochefoucauld, Talleyrand, Cha-
* Jules Simon, Une Académie sous le Directoire, 289.
† Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. iii. 102, 103. Sybel, Geschichte
der Revolutionszeit, i. 121. Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii.
400.
INSTITUTION OF THE CLUBS IN 1789.
421
pelier, and Roederer in 1789, supported by Mirabeau,
and presided over by Sièyes, but like every future
attempt it failed to check the torrent let loose. "The
task of maintaining, limiting, forbidding, belongs to
the Government, and not to a club," Madame de Staël
rightly remarks. It was still less likely to succeed
in this instance, as the difference between Duport and
La Fayette or between Barnave and Talleyrand lay
much more in the struggle for power than in the cause
of principle. Both parties wished for the Revolution,
and both wished to control it. An understanding with
the conservative forces was not to be thought of. How
could men of the strict uprightness of Clermont-
Tonnerre or Malouet work together with A. de
Lameth or Duport? The one was held by them to
be as little to be relied upon as he was dangerous,
and the other to be a fanatic who in order to reach
his object would even stoop to a lie.*
Whilst the country was being turned upside down in
feverish haste, the minister who was still nominally at
the head of affairs had to meet the daily increasing
expenses of the Revolution; and it is reckoned that it
cost several millions monthly to support the Parisian
populace alone. On the 6th of March, Necker was
obliged to announce to the deputies that the deficit for
* Malouet, Mémoires, i. 281. Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance
Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-Holstein, 144. Dépêche No. 136.
Galerie Historique des Contemporains, iv. 281: A. Duport.
† A. Sorel, L'Europe et la Révolution Française, i. 206. Sybel
Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 130.
422
MADAME DE STAËL.
He now spoke of his
the next six months amounted to two hundred and
ninety-four millions. The proposals he suggested on
making this announcement were no longer pervaded
by the former confidence.
failing health, caused by so many anxieties-of the
necessity of a rest, if not of retirement. He begged
the Assembly, who refused his request, to give him a
finance commission chosen out of their midst, so that
the responsibility might not rest entirely upon him.
Instead of founding a national bank, guaranteed by the
State as Necker intended, his demands for money had
been met since November with a project for securing
new loans, and, above all, for the issue of a paper
currency by selling the Church property, beginning
with that of the monasteries. It is to Necker's credit
that he stood out this time; he
gave himself up to no
delusions regarding the financial point of view, and
knew that without preliminary arrangements on the
part of the Government as to the employment of the
ecclesiastical funds which Mirabeau had also vainly
demanded, such proposals would only lead to greater
ruin, to farming the assignats, and to final bank-
ruptcy. For while people undervalued the difficulty
of alienating the Church property, they deceived
themselves no less as to the extent of the riches of
the Church. It was moreover expected that a portion
of the hoped-for gain would be derived from a
diminution of the cost of supporting the Church
services, which was already determined by the
transformation of the internal circumstances of the
NECKER AND THE FINANCIAL SITUATION.
423
Church. For the Left cherished the idea of dealing
a fatal blow to the Church by means of the confisca-
tion of its property.
Necker had unfortunately mere palliatives to offer
in order to avert this fresh danger. The banque
d'escompte, with the help of which he had hitherto
worked advantageously, was itself in debt, and the
fact that the State could no longer obtain credit
operated against the proposal to found a national
bank, which it was to have guaranteed.*
Although it was impossible to avert the decree of
the 19th December, which began by arranging for an
issue of assignats to the extent of four hundred
millions, its operation was hindered by the difficulty
of finding buyers at such an unfavourable moment for
goods so suddenly thrown into the market.
The Right built their hopes on this circumstance,
and Necker himself counted on carrying through his
proposal, when the Paris Commune suddenly inter-
fered, and gave a different turn to the affair. The
dread of losing such an inimitable opportunity in
favour of a disturbance led it to offer to take over
monastic property to the amount of two hundred
millions under certain favourable conditions. Other
municipalities announced that they were ready to do
the same, and thus the sale of Church property was
secured to the extent of four hundred millions. No
one could any longer doubt that this was the first
step towards entire appropriation. In vain did the
* Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, ii. 94,
424
MADAME DE STAËL.
their
clergy now offer an equal sum as hypothec upon
property. They were told that since the decision
of the 2nd of November they had lost all right
upon the Church property, which was now at the
disposal of the nation, as there had been no autho-
rised clerical order in France since the 27th of June.
The most resolute defenders of the Church felt that the
stormy disputes which now arose in the Assembly would
be useless. It was all over; on the 14th and 17th April
the constituante decided to give the clergy a salary,
and to allow the State to bear the expense of the
services; to confiscate the whole of the Church pro-
perty, and to issue assignats to the extent of four
hundred millions.
Madame de Staël had hoped that with the introduc-
tion of parliamentary government in France, her
father might succeed as Speaker in the Assembly,
not only in forming a party around himself but also
in dominating the man in whom she rightly felt was
concentrated the whole strength and vitality of the
Revolution,—namely, Mirabeau." The disappoint-
ment was all the greater as Madame de Staël recog-
nized that Mirabeau's talent combined wonderful
"strength and originality, bitterness and irony,"
that his inimitable power over his hearers depended
in no small degree on his capacity for self-restraint,
and that "his presence in the tribune impressed
every one." Extraordinary conditions alone drew
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xi. 264.
† Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. iii. 288, note after contemporaneous
evidence. Duc de Lévis, Souvenirs et Portraits, 217.
APPROPRIATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY.
425
forth a challenging exclamation or fired the incom-
parable and instantaneous inspiration, hardly ever
resisted by the constituante. Against such eloquence
Necker's words were totally inadequate. Both ver-
bally and in writing they were given out between
long pauses, and hardly knew how to rise to the
impassioned style of speech, at that time so much in
vogue. "They are tired of always hearing M.
Necker talk of his integrity," wrote the celebrated
jurist Romilly, who spent 1789 in Paris, to his friend
Dumont, after one of Necker's speeches.* Besides this,
the minister's own conviction that since the October
days the preservation of the king from personal danger
had been offered on condition of his complete sub-
mission to the Assembly, was scarcely calculated to
inspire eloquence.†
The eventful spring of 1790 had now been reached;
foreign complications were added to internal difficul-
ties. Worn out and disappointed, the Emperor
Joseph II., the friend of man and chosen defender of
philosophy, had closed his weary eyes.
In Belgium, on the borders of his empire, raged a
revolution in favour of retaining and re-acquiring old
established rights, which had little in common with
the Revolution in France, but equally set the nation
in uproar. This last was quite sufficient to ensure
the sympathies of La Fayette and his friends although
* Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, i. 378. Letter to
Dumont, December, 1789.
† De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même, vi. 167.
426
MADAME DE STAËL.
it was led by priests, noblemen, and peace-loving
citizens. Against all evidence La Fayette and his
adherents gave themselves up to the belief that this
Revolution, undertaken in favour of historically estab-
lished rights, might come to an understanding with
their own Revolution.
Even the French ministry had begun to look upon
war as the only prospect of release from the unbear-
able situation of internal affairs.
Montmorin, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, was
no less inclined to intervene in a quarrel in favour of
Spain against England, then was La Fayette to un-
sheath his sword, not merely in Brussels for his ideal
of liberty, but in Amsterdam against the Prince of
Orange, who was in league with England.*
Whilst war held out a prospect to the ministry of
again controlling an armed force, it likewise gave
General La Fayette a chance of personal success and
of renewed popularity. The same reasons led the
Jacobins and their numerous following in the
assembly, in the tribunes, in the streets, and in Marat's
“L'ami du peuple," to throw their whole influence
into the opposite scale. Robespierre, who was after-
wards to obtain the mastery by means of the war,
meanwhile denounced it as treachery on the part of
the king against the people, and the great question
arose in the Assembly as to the right to decide on war
and peace.
Another treaty of peace had previously been con-
* A. Sorel, L'Europe et la Révolution Française, ii. 54, 61, 93, 95.
THE COURT AND MIRABEAU.
427
cluded, in appearence at least, between the monarchy
and Mirabeau.
""
Unknown to Necker and aided by Count de la Marck
a reconciliation had been effected in April between
him and the court, by the king's especial wish through
Count Mercy, now ambassador from the Emperor
Leopold to his sister's court. He had succeeded in
convincing the queen that Mirabeau had no share in
the offence of the 6th of October, and, once satis-
fied on this point, her personal aversion to La Fayette
led to the idea of a reconciliation with Mirabeau.
The old marquis, his father-" l'ami des hommes
had died at the end of 1789; but this did not for the
present improve the financial situation of his son. He
therefore allowed the king to pay his debts, amount-
ing to 208,000 livres, and, moreover, agreed that the
king should place a monthly sum of 6,000 livres at
his disposal. It might have appeared unbearable to
the pride of an independent man to receive such a
sum. Mirabeau got over it on the plea that his
political attitude would not be altered thereby. As
far as he could without endangering his popularity,
he had long been an advocate of the royal preroga-
tives. De la Marck says of his friend that he felt
the king's situation more deeply than the king did
himself.*
Louis XVI., a monarch born, regarded the diminu-
*Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, i. 150. A. Sorel,
L'Europe et de la Révolution Française, ii. 39, 46. Les plans de
Mirabeau.
428
MADAME DE STAËL.
tion of his responsibility as a personal gain. When
Madame de Staël lays down that it is not possible
for a king to resign himself to a loss of power, she
judges from her personal feeling.* The grandson of
Louis XVI. would have consented to any endurable
position. Mirabeau, on the contrary, desired a strong
monarchy quite as much at a time when, repudiated
by royalty, his popularity was due to the opposition
he offered to it, as now, when he accepted its pay in
order to save the throne if it still were possible. He,
who risked his head, was, strangely enough, the candid
party in this too tardy alliance; the indecisions, the
lack of confidence, the provoking restrictions, the
perpetual irresolution, came from those who were to
be saved. It is well known how Mirabeau returned
with an enthusiastic respect for the queen from the
interview granted to him by Marie Antoinette on the
3rd of July, 1790; how at St. Cloud he called her
"the only man the king had on his side," and how
he repeatedly asserted that to save her life the throne
must also be saved. With the one the other would be lost
as well. But the queen, ever incautious in her choice,
and therefore frequently deceived, showed herself in-
capable of any lasting confidence. The Duchess of
Polignac was an example of this when she no longer
enjoyed her favour, and the hatred of the populace forced
her to take refuge in a foreign land. It might have
been thought that at least Count Mercy, her mother's
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xi. 336.
† Duc de Lévis, Souvenirs et Portraits, 134.
MIRABEAU'S CONNECTION WITH THE COURT. 429
faithful servant, and her own friend and counsellor
from early youth, would not have suffered from any
change in the queen's feelings. But we know from her
own statement in 1792 to the Duchesse de Tourzel,
that she accused Mercy of having no pity for their
situation, and that she was assured that both he
and her particular confidant, the Baron de Bréteuil,
deceived her. "Bréteuil," she says, "has never
allowed anything to influence him but self-advance-
ment."* Although the severity of such a judgment
may be put down chiefly to her misfortunes, Necker,
and even La Fayette, to whom the queen was inclined
in happier days, experienced the same alteration of
sentiment. Necker had gone through every stage of
favour and disfavour.† The insurmountable dislike,
the instinctive aversion, Marie Antoinette had felt for
La Fayette played no small part in the Revolution
ever since its commencement. On this point she and
Mirabeau appeared at any rate to be of one mind.
This dislike did not prevent the king giving his
solemn promise to have full confidence in La Fayette‡
concerning all constitutional questions, although the
negociations with Mirabeau were already set on foot.
Mirabeau was left in ignorance of the extent of the
existing relations between the king and La Fayette,
* Duchesse de Tourzel, Mémoires, ii. 106.
† Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-
Holstein, 116, 117, 125.
‡ Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. iii. 194, 195. La Fayette, Mémoires,
ii. 449, etc.
430
MADAME DE STAËL.
in the same way as the ministers were unaware of the
transactions between him and the throne. On his
own initiative, and well knowing that even opponents
must be taken into account, Mirabeau endeavoured
nevertheless to secure La Fayette's adhesion to his
policy and to unite their efforts to save the State.*
In this he succeeded as little as in securing the full
and lasting confidence of the queen and of Louis XVI.
There remained nothing therefore but the pro-
digious attempt to save the Revolution from itself;
the monarchy in spite of the court; liberty in spite
of the Jacobins; the social hierarchy in spite of the
nobility—and this at a moment when Edmund Burke
described France as politically expunged from the
European system, and when he had his manifesto in
preparation. This gigantic struggle began with the
transactions concerning the right of decision in peace
and war, to which the rumours of war had given rise.
Mirabeau desired peace; he had long recognised that
war must give the mastery to these very Jacobins who
opposed him; but he required means of defence to
enable the Government to maintain a strong defen-
sive, and that the "people's right to decide for war
or peace
"should be transferred to the king by the
Assembly on condition that the National Assembly
* Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, ii. 1-7, 15, 19-22.
La Fayette, Mémoires, ii. 367.
† Burke's speech containing the sentence here referred to is dated
Feb. 9, 1790. His remarks on the French Revolution followed in
November.
ABOLITION OF TITLES.
431
should vote supplies, and that the ministers should be
held responsible. Next day Paris was flooded with
pamphlets and newspapers announcing "the great
treachery of the Comte Mirabeau." The Left en-
trusted the matter to Barnave. The Right found an
exponent in Maury who excelled himself on this occa-
sion. But Mirabeau conquered, in so far at least that
for the future the National Assembly could not decide
on war or peace, unless suggested and sanctioned by
the king.
La Fayette stood by Mirabeau on this occasion;
the latter never experienced a greater oratorical
triumph than that of the 22nd May; but the political
victory was incomplete and isolated. This was at
once seen in the events of the following week: the
debates on the civil constitution of the clergy, in
which Mirabeau took no part; the abolition of
nobility as a preparation for the great fraternal
rejoicings of liberty and equality; the federation
which was to be inaugurated on the anniversary of
the 14th of July in Paris.
On the 19th July that party in the nobility which
had begun the Revolution, and which had sacrificed
its privileges on the night of the 4th of August, now
unhesitatingly sacrificed all that remained to it of
outward honours, titles, escutcheons, and distinctions.
The
Even names which in some cases might be traced
back many hundred years had to be abolished.
Montmorencies were to be called Bouchard in future;
the Mirabeaus Riquetti. "Vous avez désorienté l'Europe
432
MADAME DE STAËL.
pendant quatre jours avec votre nom de Riquetti,"
said Mirabeau to the journalist who had called him
Riquetti l'dine; and he chose that moment to put
his servants into livery.
Unlike A. de Lameth, Noailles, the young Mathieu
de Montmorency, or La Fayette, who had specially
counselled the king to abolish the nobility, he dwelt
upon the power of tradition, the impossibility of
disturbing the real conception of nobility in this
way.† Lawful equality must be preserved, but any
other was only misplaced vanity. Mirabeau rightly
saw, and even the next transactions proved, how pre-
posterous it was to fight against things established by
nature itself, and therefore certain to come up again
in one form or another. Instead of abolishing the
existing distinctions, the Marquis de Condorcet pro-
posed that every one should be at liberty to take
whatever title he liked, and Napoleon afterwards
remedied the blunder made by the constituante by
creating a military nobility in his own interest.
The next decree, which concerned the constitution of
the Church, had far more serious results than the prece-
ding, which Necker had endeavoured vainly to prevent. ‡
The reasons which induced the clergy to join the
movement for summoning the States-General have
already been given. From the first they gave such
* Duc de Lévis, Souvenirs et Portraits, 209.
† Lettres de Mirabeau à un de ses amis d'Allemagne, 519. Mirabeau
to Mauvillon, August 4, 1790.
Necker, Mémoire au Roi, Mai, 1790. Euvres complètes.
CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY.
433
unmistakeable and decisive proof of sympathy for the
cause of the people that nothing would have been
easier than to preserve this sympathy. The more
difficult problem would undoubtedly have been to trifle
with their alliance, and to turn the French clergy
into opponents. The year 1789 had hardly come to
an end before the National Assembly had solved the
problem; and this time the fault lay not so much in
the shortsightedness of their theorizing philosophers
as in the encounter of their doctrines with other
influences and motives of action. The political ten-
dencies of the day, their levelling ideal of equality,
must come into opposition with an organization
founded like the Catholic Church on authority, even
without the aid of the "Conspiracy of Atheism.
""
The past of the Gallican Church alone explains the
common ground on which the disturbing powers of
revolution were in sympathy with the struggles of this
Church for reformation. By the Concordat of 1516 the
Pope Leo X. had, in consideration of great material
profit for the Curia, ceded to the crown of France the
right, hitherto held by the chapters, of nominating the
bishops and high dignitaries of the Gallican Church.
From that moment dates the alliance of the clergy
and the crown, at first unwillingly imposed upon the
former. The clergy supported the power of the
crown, and assisted to consolidate the nation. The
great teachers upheld the doctrine that princes were
answerable to God alone, and not to any earthly
authority. They developed this theory with such
VOL. I.
2 F
434
MADAME DE STAËL.
success that it was sufficiently established to be
advanced in the time of Louis XIV. against Rome
itself.*
The crown on the other hand robbed the clergy by
degrees of all sovereign power and political inde-
pendence, but bestowed splendour and riches upon
them, made good the loss of their former influence
by appointments to the most important offices of the
State, and rewarded their devotion to the political
unity of the nation by the preservation of unity
in religious belief. The same monarch who besieged
Avignon, called together a common council against the
Pope, and allowed his nuncio to be taken prisoner,-
persecuted heresy and revoked the Edict of Nantes.
The climax of the alliance between Church and State
was reached when the reign of Louis XIV. was in its
prime.† It is easy to understand that from that
time a retrograde movement was inevitable. The
importance of the Gallican Church rested not only on
an outward position but much more on the fact that
as the teacher of Christianity she had created a great
doctrinal system, and the theological school to which
she gave her name, and which she had preserved
intact by the help of famous doctors and divines.
The old Gallican doctrines were found to be in sharp
opposition to the teaching afterwards represented
by the order of Jesus; and when the struggle
against external enemies such as the Protestants and
* Bossuet, La Politique tirée de l'Écriture Sainte.
† See Chapter IV.
CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY.
435
Huguenots began to cease, differences arose in the
bosom of the French Church itself, in which men of
the most distinguished intellect,-not merely bishops
and theologians like St. Cyran, the Arnauds, Bossuet
and Fénélon, but laymen of the genius of Blaise
Pascal and the poetic distinction of Racine, - took
part. The battle was not confined to the theological
sphere alone. Accustomed to interfere where it was
a question of warding off external attack and con-
trolling heresy, the temporal power now interposed
and favoured the Jesuits, who had gained the king's
ear by means of his confessors, causing the Gallicans
and the Jansenists, as their opponents, to feel the
whole weight of religious persecution. Louis XIV.
died, but the persecution continued to exist and to
smother all spiritual life in the Church.
Outwardly peace was certainly restored, but it was
the peace of the graveyard.
of the graveyard. The distinguished and
educated men among the clergy were given up to
pleasure, political intrigue, and too often to the irregu-
larities of an immoral life. The field of theology lay
uncultured. The spirit of opposition still flourished
in the parlements, and led the French magistracy to
that resistance which unintentionally prepared the
Revolution.
Retribution did not fail to come upon the authors
of this situation. The suppression of the order of
Jesus was chiefly the work of the parlements, an
act of retaliation proceeding from that portion of the
magistracy which was Jansenist in its sentiments.
2 F 2
436
MADAME DE STAËL.
But the wound dealt to the French conscience could
not be healed. Forced orthodoxy became unbelieving
indifference; the suppression of freedom bred hypo-
crisy.
Materialistic doctrine found its way through the
open breach. But religious consciousness, although
forced back and condemned to silence, was not dead.
The destructive teaching by which the great majority
of educated people were swayed was counterbalanced
by the practice in the lower order of those modest
virtues which nurture civilisation and support nations;
whilst a few learned theologians and pious laymen
cherished the old Gallican doctrine and the strict
Jansenist observance with that tenacity peculiar to
all persecuted convictions.
Now that both in public and private life all chains
were loosed, and Liberty, if not the aim was at least
the watchword, nothing seemed more natural than
that the parties in the Church so long oppressed
should imagine the moment to have arrived for claim-
ing the right to freedom of action, and for establish-
ing a condition of things that would preclude any
return to tyrannical despotism or to the compulsion
formerly endured. Thus sincerely religious men like
Lanjuinais, the advocate Camus, an authority on the
subject of ecclesiastical law among the clergy, his
colleagues Treilhard, Freteau, Durand - Maillane,
shared in the work of the committee on clerical affairs,
which produced the civil constitution for the clergy.
These men sincerely desired reform and a return
CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY.
437
to the purity of apostolic times. In the midst of a
generation inimical to every tradition, intent upon re-
newing all things from the beginning, they alone clung
to the earlier rights and advanced the ancient constitu-
tion of the Gallican Church. Meanwhile they over-
looked the difficulties presented by the surrounding
circumstances, in the midst of which they hoped to
reach their object. An experienced politician, after-
wards Madame de Staël's son-in-law, spoke warningly
of battles in which all doubtful elements would be
sure to join, whilst orderly, peaceable people would be
frightened into taking the opposite side.* A struggle
of this sort was begun by the Jansenists and Gallicans
composing the constituante.
The Left was already prepared to help them; for
the Jacobins, by virtue of the same motives whereby
a Camus or a Gregoire hoped to re-establish the Chris-
tianity of the first centuries, upheld the principle of
the sovereignty of the people and the omnipotence
of the State even in the Church; and whilst they
demanded the restoration of the ancient prerogatives
of the Gallican Church at the hands of the Roman
See they extensively interfered in the internal affairs
of the Church itself.
Through the diminution of the dioceses, caused by
the eighty-three new departments, fifty-three of the
former one hundred and thirty-six bishoprics lapsed ;
and, moreover, the mode of election was considerably
* Duc de Broglie, Notices Biographiques inédites, quoted by Thureau.
Dangin, Histoire de la Monarchie de Juillet, i. 213.
438
MADAME DE STAËL.
altered. The electors in each district were for the
future to elect their priest, and the electors in the
departments to choose their bishop. It was in no
wise essential to be a Catholic in order to exercise
this right. It was only necessary to attend one mass
in order to be qualified. All chapters and ecclesi-
astical jurisdiction were abolished. The bishops were
for the future to announce their nomination to the
pope, but they were forbidden to seek canonical in-
stallation at his hands, and he lost the right of bestow-
ing dispensations.
Each individual elected was required to take the
oath of fidelity to the nation, the king, and the con-
stitution. Robespierre further demanded the abolition
of celibacy, and Barnave declared conventual vows
to be a violation of the Rights of Man. Far from
regretting it, the Jacobins were enchanted to think that
the success of these designs might alienate the clergy
from the cause of the Revolution, and that it might
create special opposition on the part of those who
had sacrificed most to its cause. The prospect of
destroying the Church was incomparably more wel-
come to them than any union with it could be.
Not only the king but the bishops, and amongst
them the noble Boisgelin, archbishop of Aix, Cicé,
archbishop of Bordeaux and keeper of the seal, and
priests of the conciliatory tone of the abbé de Mon-
tesquieu, endeavoured to bring about an understanding
between Rome and the French episcopate, and this
for the sake of individually wise and useful arrange-
CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY.
439
ments, although they could not approve of the whole
tenour of the civil constitution. They succeeded, at
least for the space of seven months, until the 10th
of March, 1791, in delaying the condemnation of it
by the gentle Pius VI., after it had been sanctioned
by the king, on the 24th of August.*
Fully ten months before, since May 1790, several
French provinces had replied with civil war to the inter-
ference of the National Assembly in the inner organ-
isation of the Church. When the country-folk saw
that the ecclesiastical property, hitherto well-managed
or economically farmed, had fallen into the hands of
speculators or was to be taken from them by new
owners, they sent petitions to the National Assembly
against the demolition of the Catholic religion, and
as this had no result they next resorted to armed
opposition. In Alsace, in Brittany, but principally
in the south, in Provence, Aix, Marseilles, Nimes and
Montauban, bloodshed ensued, and murderous en-
counters between Catholics and Protestants, between
the adherents of the Revolution and its opponents.†
The constituante which regarded the people as
sovereign, only when it went with the Jacobin
majority, answered this demonstration on its part by
advertising, or more correctly, by swallowing up all
Church property not yet sold, by officially setting to
* Chauvelot, Lettres de Louis XVI. Louis XVI. à Pie VI. July 2,
1790.
† Taine, Origines, etc. La Révolution, i. 322, etc. René Lavollée,
L'Église et la Constituante. Correspondant, September, 1873.
440
MADAME DE STAËL.
work to plunder churches and sacristies, convents
and monasteries, and by completing the civil con-
stitution.
The portion of the nation still faithful to the Church
was now overwhelmingly convinced that nothing less
than a conspiracy against all religion was the chief
object. It was no longer a question of fresh reforms
in the Church, but the ranks closed up all the more
firmly against the new danger.
A disturbance of religious belief had failed in many
cases to accomplish that which pride of order and
the desire to hold together now brought about. "We
behaved like true noblemen in 1791," said the arch-
bishop of Narbonne, "for most of us cannot assert
that we did it for the sake of religion.*
Only five bishops were subsequently found willing
to accept the civil constitution for the Church; three
of those bore the worst reputation in the French epis-
pate,-namely, Talleyrand, Loménie de Brienne, and
Jarente.
By the invitation of the Left, in reply to Mira-
beau's threats, the Gallican Montlosier uttered the
words which the debates of three revolutionary Assem-
blies could not obliterate: "You chase the bishops
from their palaces; they will seek refuge in the huts of
the poor they have nourished. You rob them of their
golden crosses; they will find crosses made of wood:
* La Fayette, Mémoires, iii. 56. A. Sorel, L'Europe et la Révolu-
tion Française, ii. 119.
CIVIL CONSTITUTION OF THE CLERGY.
441
Contrary to
;
a wooden cross redeemed the world." *
its adverse assertion of entire liberty and toleration
the Assembly assumed power over religious matters
and on the 27th November, 1790, it forced all priests to
take the oath to the constitution, on pain of dismissal
from their office and of prosecution as disturbers of
the public peace if they continued to fulfill it.†
From this decision dates the schism in the French
Church, not restricted merely to its own limits but
spreading over the whole nation and hastening its
ruin. Much against his will, under pressure of the
Assembly, amidst threats from the tribunes and in fear
of uproar, after in vain hoping for a decision from
Rome-Louis XVI. at length yielded, on the 23rd
December, and signed the decree of the 27th November.
To this step, taken against his conviction, may be
ascribed his thoughts of flight and his plans for once
again obtaining the mastery in France with aid from
abroad.‡ "Rather be king at Metz than ruler of
France under such conditions," he said at that time
to Count Fersen.
The overwhelming sentiment of the untenability
of his position overcame him on that day in April
1791 when a ferocious multitude forced him to
* Bardoux, Le Comte de Montlosier, 37. The words are engraved
on his tombstone.
† Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 230, note 1.
The king to Fersen. Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. iii. 299, 320,
etc. Mémoires de Bouillé, ix. x. A. Sorel, L'Europe et la Révolution
Française, ii. 128.
442
MADAME DE STAËL.
give up the expedition to St. Cloud, whither, after
the pope's condemnation of the civil constitution, he
had intended to resort in order to receive the Easter
sacraments from a priest who had not taken the oath.
He was lost from the moment when on the 29th
of November, 1791, he refused to veto the decree of
the legislative which led from silent toleration to open
persecution, and awarded deprivation of office and
banishment to every priest who refused to take the
oath. Two-thirds of the Catholic clergy were made
liable to the penal law; the prisons were filled
with priests; nearly twenty-eight thousand were
deported; * others went of their own accord into
exile. It is calculated that two thousand one hundred
and eighty-three persons-priests, monks, and nuns-
lost their lives during the Revolution for the sake of
their sacred calling.†
It is to the honour of the authoress of Les Considéra-
tions that she never on this occasion hesitated to take
the part of the victims. The sense of justice which
the question of property failed to evoke was re-
awakened when persecution arose. "It is a fatal
error,” she writes, "to require an oath from priests
which their conscience cannot accept, and to punish
* De Pradt, Les quatre Concordats, ii. 34.
↑ Martyrologe du Clergé Française pendant la Révolution. Paris,
1840. Abbé Carron, Les Confesseurs de la Foi dans l'Église Gallicane
à la fin du xviii siècle. Details on the subject. Delbos, L'Eglise de
France. Guettée, Histoire de l'Eglise de France. Sciout, Histoire de
la Constitution Civile du Clergé.
ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY. 443
them for refusing to take it. It is to put political in
the place of religious intolerance, and to excite the
opposition of all honour and conscience." *
But this sketch of the Church question has antici-
pated events, for there previously arose a question
of organising a féte, the first during the Revolution.
On the anniversary of the 14th of July the oath was
taken to the still unfinished constitution at the altar
of the nation in the presence of the royal family, the
National Assembly, deputations of the National Guard
from every province, and an enormous crowd of
people. At the altar-towards the erection of which,
upon a high mound, monks and distinguished ladies
had wheeled barrows of earth-stood Talleyrand,
bishop of Autun, in pontifical robes, to celebrate mass
and to bless the flags of the Nation, assisted by the
abbé Louis, afterwards known as Baron Louis, the
famous finance minister during the Restoration. It
is said that cynical words passed between the two at
that time and in that place.†
On the anniversary of the Revolution, when the
oath was taken to the constitution, which, in a series
of twenty thousand paragraphs of laws and decrees,
took the power out of his hands, the king was received
with indescribable enthusiasm. The Duchesse de
Tourzel calls this feast of the federation "the last
bright day for the queen," and mentions that on the
return from Varennes Barnave told Madame Elizabeth
*Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 363, 403.
† Sainte-Beuve, Talleyrand. Nouveaux Lundis, xii. 12.
4.4.4
MADAME DE STAËL.
that if the king had understood how to use the predom-
inant feeling and had gone to the provinces the revolu-
tionary party would have had no further chance.*
The Duchesse de Tourzel's observation is further
and curiously confirmed in the contents of a letter
from La Fayette to Washington in August 1796, in
which it is said that "the people are beginning to
weary both of the Revolution and of the National
Assembly."†
Baron de Staël and his wife as eye-witnesses have
both described this day, which Necker's daughter
under the impression of the prevailing excitement
would still have been inclined to celebrate as the first
of the new order of things and of a moderate monarchy
had not the intense anxiety depicted on her father's
features been a warning against such premature
hopes. In point of fact this first anniversary of the
taking of the Bastille was scarcely less important than
the day upon which that event had actually occurred.
When the Jacobins realised the unmistakable signs of
disgust called forth by the Revolution they collected
all their strength, and renewed their efforts. Camille
Desmoulins preached insurrection; Marat's mono-
mania for murder came to a head. The notorious
phrase, "five or six hundred heads cut off would
have secured quiet, liberty, and happiness for you—
* Duchesse de Tourzel, Mémoires, i. 150.
† La Fayette, Mémoires, iii. 138.
Léouzon Le Duc, Correspondance Diplomatique du Baron de Staël-
Holstein, 166. Madame de Staël, Considérations, 377, 381.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE JACOBINS.
445
a false humanity has stayed your arm," originated in
those days. Marat's organ, L'Ami du Peuple, de-
manded "stones for all who still dared to preach royalist
doctrines; and the life, not only of the ministers, but
that of their adherents, those helots and sybarites, the
agents of the executive. A gigantic scaffold in the
Tuileries gardens should be the answer to the disgrace-
ful attempt, and the daring demand for the reconstruc-
tion of the army. ""*
It was therefore towards this subject that the un-
failing instinct of revolution continued to be directed.
The abolition of the nobility had introduced a new
element of discord into the army, it had strengthened
the soldiers in their notions of equality and their resist-
ance to their superiors, and in the same way it had
disposed the officers unfavourably towards the Revolu-
tion. The daily efforts of the democratic press to
promote uproar and disorder, to encourage the murder
of treacherous officers, and to carry out foolish designs,
bore due fruit. In June, 1790, Mirabeau called the
army a tool for any one who might wish to carry on
the trade of plunder and crime on a large scale.
Town and country trembled, he said, before the
doings of uproarious soldiers. The Nancy regi-
ments replied with an armed rising to the decree at
last voted by the National Assembly for suppressing
the military clubs, and were quelled by the energetic
* Marat, L'Ami du Peuple. Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. iii. 247.
Taine, Origines, etc. La Révolution, ii. Psychologie du Jacobin, 333,
334.
446
MADAME DE STAËL.
i
Bouillé, with the aid of his still loyal garrison of
Metz. This victory of order was, however, an ex-
ception; and discipline continued to be set aside.
After the 14th July, Rivarol had already jestingly
remarked, that whereas desertion had hitherto been
considered a disgrace to the army, it had now become
a claim for military distinction.* A proposition made
by Mirabeau to disband and reorganize the whole
army was negatived; but it was entirely remodelled.
The king now had a voice in the highest military
appointments only, whilst in every other respect the
army was withdrawn from his influence. On the one
side, discipline was strengthened, and on the other the
soldiers were allowed a vote; at least on some trifling
promotion. The National Assembly desired yet more
eagerly to get the mastery of the armed force out of
the hands of the Executive than to reorganise the
army. They had prepared the soil for it by an
increase of pay and other concessions; it was now a
mere question of procuring the financial means
towards the fulfilment of their promises.
In April the assignats were issued, in August three
hundred and thirty of the four hundred millions
were already exhausted, and the monthly deficit now
amounted to three millions, without any prospect of
further means of help. On similar occasions Necker's
existence was usually recollected; but this time the
finance committee of the National Assembly drew up
* Rivarol, Preface to the Petit Dictionnaire des grands Hommes de
la Révolution.
NEW ISSUE OF ASSIGNATS.
447
a new plan to cancel the floating debt, which was
not even imparted to the minister.
The younger
financial authorities in the Assembly did not attempt
to conceal that he wearied them, and that they con-
sidered him to be worn out and past work. It was
now a choice between an issue of fresh assignats, and
State bankruptcy. Mirabeau had spoken his opinion
upon both eventualities; his powerful speech of
November, upon the fearful consequences of either,
was not forgotten. But he considered paper money
to be such a dangerous expedient that he was
wont to call it the circulating pest.* Nevertheless,
just as formerly, he now encouraged the further
issue of assignats to the amount of eight hundred
millions, and this time on no other security than
raising mortgages on the State domains.
The poli-
tical motives were much stronger than the economical
in this affair. In financial as in other matters
everything was entirely in the power of the pro-
letariat, especially in that of the Parisian populace,
who would only consent to taxes which they had not
to pay, and therefore made all reasonable financial
systems impossible. Other considerations were added
to this. By the issue of the assignats the fortunes of the
proprietary classes became more or less dependant on
the value of the paper. The sale of the State domains
became necessary, the interests of all new purchasers
of them were identified with those of the Revolution
* Mirabeau, Lettre à Cerutti, Janvier, 1789.
448
MADAME DE STAËL.
and accelerated one of its aims-the division of the
soil among as many individuals as possible. Mirabeau
chose to accept the assignats as hypothec on the land
rather than as paper money, and to believe that the
increase of peasant proprietors would afford a strong
protection against the efforts of anarchy. One of
Mirabeau's numerous notes to the court, indicated his
own adviser in financial matters, the Genevan, Cla-
vières, as the successor of Necker, whose retirement he
regarded as a foregone conclusion.* On this occasion
Necker met him half-way. He tendered a special
memorial to the National Assembly earnestly warn-
ing it against issuing fresh assignats, and pro-
phesying, what really came to pass, that without
previous reform of the economy of the State these
fresh sums would disappear like the four hundred
millions derived from the Church property. He took
the opportunity of uttering words of political wisdom
concerning the danger of allowing abstractions to
enter into public affairs, and of putting systems in
the place of experience.† "Le gros bon sens," he said
pointedly; every day I would bow before it with
increasing respect.”‡ This memorial, listened to
with frosty indifference by the Assembly, was read
on the 27th of August. On the 31st of August,
Bouillé suppressed the mutinous regiments at
Nancy.
66
* Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, ii. 149-156.
† De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même, vii. 448.
Necker, Du pouvoir exécutif dans les grands Etats, viii. 46.
NECKER THREATENED BY THE PARISIAN POPULACE. 449
In its fury over this, the demagogic party in Paris
made Necker responsible for the triumph of order.
As far back as July, Marat had insanely accused
Necker, in one of his pamphlets against him, of
having devoted the quarter of his income-that
patriotic gift which never was repaid-to the pur-
pose of raising and arming 500,000 men to enslave
France.*
Even earlier, towards the end of 1789, Robespierre
assured Garat, afterwards minister of justice, that
Necker plundered the State treasure; pack-horses
had been met on the road to Geneva laden with his
gold! †
The king's prime minister found himself constantly
forced to justify himself in the most humiliating
manner, and to make useless attempts to invoke the
protection of the Assembly against base accusations.‡
In the first days of September things reached such
a point that La Fayette, whilst an uproarious crowd
in the streets of Paris demanded vengeance for the
slaughter at Nancy, sent an aide-de-camp to Necker
and warned him to take measures for his safety. He
went to St. Ouen, where his arrival caused such ex-
citement that he found it unadvisable to go to his
own house, and passed the night wandering about
* Pamphlet de Marat contre Necker, Juillet, 1790.
Origines, etc. La Révolution, ii. Psychologie du Jacobin.
† Garat, Mémoires, i. 97.
‡ Necker, Troisième Ministère, vii. 402.
2 G
VOL. I.
In Taine,
450
MADAME DE STAËL.
the neighbourhood. Only in the morning did he join
his terrified wife.*
He now no longer hesitated but tendered his re-
signation to the king under pretext of failing strength
and ruined health. This was expected, and accepted.
without demur. The court felt no gratitude towards
Necker for having, quite recently, endeavoured to
preserve for it the right of appointments in the civil
and military list, as well as the continued payment of
pensions from the royal treasury, and for resolutely
refusing to allow the National Assembly to scrutinize
the so-called red-book in which was entered the secret
outlay.† Party hatred profited even by his retire-
ment to brand him with cowardice for withdrawing
at a moment when, as Cazalès remarked, all good
citizens ought to sacrifice their lives to the defence
of their country.‡
As guarantee for his administration the retiring
minister left the sum of two millions in the treasury
which had been made over the year before for the
purpose of laying in provisions of corn. It seemed
the bitterest irony that the man, whom the hatred of
the Right and the passions of the populace alike
held responsible for ruining the nation, could find
nothing more serious of which to accuse his con-
science than the fact that he, who had always served
* Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. iii. 265, 266.
† Duchesse de Tourzel, Mémoires, i. 167. Madame de Staël, Con-
sidérations, xii. 387.
Cazalès, Discours du 16 Oct. 1790.
MADAME NECKER AGAIN PUBLICLY MENTIONED. 451
the nation gratuitously, had once accepted a consign-
ment of fruit and Arabian coffee from Provence.*
It was hardly noticed amidst the disturbances of
1790 that Necker closed this third and last ministry
with the same episode as his first. For in the letter
announcing his retirement to the National Assembly
he mentions the anxiety and care endured by a wife
equally beloved and valued as one of the reasons for
this step; in his subsequent justification of his third
administration he added that he feared not again to
call forth the ridicule of indifference by acknowledg-
ing the merits of one whose unexampled benevolence
deserved recognition.†
Necker left Paris on the 8th of September, 1790,
and was accompanied by his wife to Coppet. This
time Madame de Staël did not accompany her parents.
Her eldest son, Auguste de Staël, was born on the 31st
August, and on this account she was obliged to remain
behind, full of well-founded fears and anxiety as to
the fate of her parents.
Four days after Necker's departure he sent a courier
to her with the news, that, although provided with
two sets of passports by the king and the National
Assembly, he had been detained at Arcis-sur-Aube by
a furious mob and taken prisoner as a traitor to the
national cause. A special order from the National
Assembly was required before he was allowed to
* De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même, vi. 333, note.
† Idem, vi. 322. Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 387, 396.
2 G 2
452
MADAME DE STAËL,
proceed on his way to Switzerland, insulted and
threatened with stone-throwing by the same popula-
tion that thirteen months before had worshipped him.
At Vesoul his life was in danger.
His calmness of temperament did not desert him,
and no complaint passed his lips; but the thought of
King Lear came into his mind, and the creation of
his imagination, the idol he had reverenced in former
days, l'opinion public, fell back into the region of
dreams. He, who is described by Barnave as the
first man whose popularity was European, thus writes:
"I know not why public opinion is no longer as
much to me as it used to be. The respect I once
cherished for it is shattered since I have seen it
tremble before the same men which it had condemned
and disgraced shortly before.” *
The ministry at the head of which Necker had
stood did not fall till November, and then in conse-
quence of a note of want of confidence from Mira-
beau. Montmorin alone remained in the newly-
formed cabinet as a faithful but irresolute observer
and councillor, and was not alienated by the situation.
As a last resource, the chaotic state of matters might
be unravelled by Mirabeau's plans of re-construction.
From June to the 3rd of February, 1791, the latter
drew up the leading features of a policy for the
court in fifteen notes, and thereby endeavoured with
astounding energy to set agoing the whole remaining
strength of resistance against the anarchy that had
* De l'Administration de M. Necker, par lui-même, 1791, vi. preface.
MIRABEAU'S NOTE FOR THE COURT.
453
been let loose. No return to the old state of things,
but the establishment of order; no abolition of the
constitution, but a counter-constitution to replace it.
No surrender of what was already gained, no return
to privileges, to the unequal division of taxation, to the
independence of the provinces, to the existence of the
parlements, of the nobility and clergy as superior
orders,―was incessantly repeated by Mirabeau to the
court, and almost in the same words as Morris in his
letters to Washington.* He held that it was no less
advantageous for the king than for the people to estab-
lish a uniform system of taxation; liberty, although
not entirely unrestrained, for the press; toleration in
religious matters; responsibility in the servants of
the Executive; equality of every one before the law;
control of the finances by the nation. On the other
hand, says Mirabeau, the king's authority must be
duly restored, the predominance of a faction broken
up, and an end put to the tyranny of the capital over
the provinces.
It was impossible to govern with two million armed
men; the army was disorganised, the National Guard
on the contrary was in the hands of the municipality;
promises had been made to the people which no one
could keep; and prospects of compensation held out
to the injured which could never be realised. The
laws were disregarded; the newly created authorities,
the municipalities, districts, departments, mutually
thwarted and checked each other. The constitution
* Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, ii. 118.
454
MADAME DE STAËL.
1
was the work of fear and hatred, an unheard-of
concession to the people to win its favour, to tempt it,
and to impose a tyrannical yoke upon it instead of
liberty. Expecting to last for ever, it only provided
for the present. It must be altered, and from its
materials a moderate monarchy built up.* That was
the aim. The means, still according to Mirabeau,
were support and encouragement of royalist ten-
dencies throughout the land, by the press, the clubs,
agents, pamphlets, and by adoption of the tactics of
the opposition; † and the king must be set free from
the trammels of La Fayette and the Parisian de-
mocracy, openly and before the whole world, "as
becomes a king who desires to remain a king."‡
Mirabeau considered civil war to be inevitable, pro-
bably necessary; men must however decide whether
it were to be allowed to come to pass, or whether they
would initiate it. La Fayette was powerless as soon
as he tried to do without the will of the Parisian
populace, but as he still outwardly represented its
power, his influence must be destroyed; the general of
the Parisian National Guard must be rendered harm-
less. This actually came to pass, owing to the fact that
Mirabeau was able to deprive him, at the beginning
of 1791, of the gratuities he reserved from the civil
list § for his private police. The result of these
* Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, ii. 209, etc. and
223. Notes of the 6th and 13th of Oct. 1790.
† Idem, ii. 78-418.
‡ Idem, ii. 34.
§ Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 216.
MIRABEAU AND LA FAYETTE AT VARIANCE. 455
measures was so soon felt that Mirabeau had even to
advise a delay in La Fayette's overthrow rather than
that it should be unduly precipitated.*
In October he boldly proposed that were the ministers
to be chosen from amongst the deputies, they
should be selected from the ranks of the Jacobins,
for "les Jacobins ministres ne sont pas des ministres
Jacobins" -once in power, even they would be
forced to restore the king's authority. In January
he dwelt upon the necessity of fortifying the National
Assembly in all its errors, and by this means luring it to
its own destruction. It must wear marvellous spectacles,
he wrote to his friend de la Marck, if the dismissal of
twenty thousand parish priests does not open its
eyes; † but at the same time he took steps, especially
in the Church question, which terrified the king's con-
science, and again roused all his prejudices against
Mirabeau. He never possessed the king's full confi-
dence. As before, he was obliged to use his popu-
larity as a weapon against the reactionary plans of
the Right, the distrust of the court, and the hatred of
the Jacobins. His last great triumph consisted in
frustrating the plans of his personal opponents, Lameth,
Duport, Barnave, and their adherents, when, in the
celebrated apostrophe on the occasion of a discussion
upon the laws against emigrants, he commanded the
* Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, iii, 9, and 27.
Note of January 17, 1791, and letter from de la Marck to Mercy,
Jan. 26, 1791.
† Correspondance entre Mirabeau et de la Marck, ii. 360, 365,
370.
456
MADAME DE STAËL.
"thirty voices" to be silent. He often repeated that
the thought was unbearable to him that he should
merely have assisted to bring about great destruction ;
ordinary strength was sufficient for destruction, pig-
mies might be employed; but to reconstruct, men
were necessary and there were none to be had: "You
will have massacres of the people and slaughter,” he
once said from the tribune, "but never the dreadful
renown of a civil war."*
The weighty question whether Mirabeau was in a
position to stop the stone which had begun to roll, to
bring the Revolution to a standstill, the king to act,
to make use of the passive elements of society as a
defensive weapon, was answered in the negative
by the friend and sincere admirer we have so often
quoted, the Prince Augustus of Arenberg, Count de
la Marck. Mirabeau himself went through every
stage of discouragement or of confidence, according
as he dwelt most upon the weakness and insuffi-
ciency of the means of assistance, or allowed himself
to be dominated by the inexhaustible strength of his
genius. Much, such as the transactions between the
king, Bréteuil and Bouillé, during the autumn and
winter of 1790, remained unknown to him.† Appa-
rently he had never been more powerful than in
March, 1791, during his first brilliant presidency over
the National Assembly, and after the scene in the
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 413. Dumont, Souvenirs
sur Mirabeau, 218, etc.
† Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. iii, 327.
THE DEATH OF MIRABEAU, 1790.
457
Jacobin club, as the exponent of liberal opinions and
the opponent of anarchy.
Then came Death, and the problem as to whether
monarchical France was to be saved, remained unsolved.
Mirabeau died on the 2nd of April, 1791. The
strong impression he had made on Madame de Staël,
the interest and sympathy which he had wrung from
her, increased to patriotic sorrow now that the curtain
had fallen on his life, "strangled by his passions as
the Laocoon was strangled by the serpents." Whilst
still under the immediate impression of his loss, she
extolled the man "who was strong enough to speak
of order without fearing despotism, of the general
safety without incurring the suspicion that he would
make exceptions in favour of individuals." "The great
oak has fallen" are the last words of the first volume
of Les Considérations; "we cannot discern what is to
follow."*
At this date Grimm's Correspondence ceases. He
might feel that the policy he rejected derived its
existence from those very productions, which, through
him and Diderot, had cultivated the mind and taste
of the great world of Europe, and had educated it in
its theories. The southern Marmontel had come to
the same conclusion as the clever, discreet, and even
pessimist German. The long-cherished delusion that
"If every one was not great most people were good,”
* Madame de Staël, Considérations, xii. 407, and A quel signes peut
on connaître, quelle est l'opinion de la majorité de la Nation, 1792, xvii.
325.
458
MADAME DE STAËL.
the naïve belief that the world might be improved by
moral stories like those of the Inkas and Belisarius, *
now aroused in him an honourable indignation. Go-
verneur Morris relates that when the current discus-
sions were lost in metaphysical common-places, Mar-
montel used to demand clear definitions; and that on
one occasion, after dinner at his house, he had dis-
armed his opponent by insisting on such with regard
to the Rights of Man.† And Morris? Amongst all
his contemporaries this man who had assisted to found
a Republic had never changed his opinions with regard
to France. Events had only strengthened them.
Mirabeau's death he hardly considered to be a loss.
The gift of genius without the security of upright
principles was weighed in the balance and found
wanting. But he again paid tribute to human falli-
bility when he imagined that Talleyrand could
replace Mirabeau. This made the situation all the
more clear in the letters written by Morris to Wash-
ington upon French affairs. They are to this day
historical, and appear all the more valuable when
compared with other letters of that time, such as the
insignificant despatches of Lord Gower, the English
ambassador, or the letters written by La Fayette
to Washington. "All that existed," La Fayette
"La
writes in 1790 to his greatest friend, "we have
destroyed. Perhaps it was the only means of over-
*Sainte-Beuve. Marmontel, Causeries de Lundi, iv. 516.
† Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, i. 353, and ii. 89.
The Despatches of Earl Gower. Cambridge University Press,
185.
MORRIS.
459
coming innumerable obstacles. We have thereupon
established a whole quantity of constitutional, legis-
lative, and administrative decrees; of the latter—
only too many. Happily I have been able to
persuade the Assembly of the necessity for previously
issuing a Declaration of the Rights of Men. Most of
our decrees are in harmony with this. Our mistakes
are mostly of a popular and speculative kind. We
must reckon that the influence of the monarchy will
amend them in a few years by means of a second
convention. If we had stopped half-way it would
have been impossible to overcome difficulties and to
root out prejudices. It was this that kept up my
determination to abolish the last remnants of all aris-
tocratic institutions in our country.”* A few months
later Governeur Morris wrote to this same Washington.†
"This unhappy country, bewildered in the pursuit of
metaphysical whimsies, presents to our moral view
a mighty ruin. The sovereign humbled to the
level of a beggar's pity, without resources, without
authority, without a friend. The Assembly at once a
master and a slave, new in power, wild in theory,
raw in practice. It engrosses all functions though
incapable of exercising any, and has taken from this
fierce ferocious people every restraint of religion
and respect. One thing only seems to be tolerably
* La Fayette, Mémoires, iii. 138. La Fayette to Washington,
August 23, 1790.
† Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, ii. 117. Morris to Washing-
ton, Paris, 22nd November, 1790.
460
MADAME DE STAËL.
ascertained, that the opportunity is lost, and (for the
time at least) the Revolution has failed."*
The recipient of this letter left no doubt as to
which of his correspondents he agreed with.
"All
that we hear from France," he wrote to La Fayette,
"inspires us with more fear than hope."+ Amongst
all the powers of liberty, George Washington was one
of the sincerest and greatest, and with the sure
political instinct of his race he held to Edmund
Burke.
Necker's book upon the Executive, which appeared
in 1792, a year after his retirement, and almost
simultaneously with the history of his third admin-
istration, was the most important of his political
writings. In it he describes and criticizes the work
done by the constituante.
He follows the building up of the constitution,
which, proceeding from the monarchy and proclaiming
it as the established form, surrounded the throne with
republican institutions and by a single all-powerful
chamber subject to no control and possessing complete
power over the Government, until at last its seven hun-
dred and forty-five deputies, with a salary of eighteen
francs a day, made known their commands to the king
of France as to their "head clerk," and he saw himself
obliged, if he expected to retain so much as a gratuity
of a hundred francs, to obtain their approval.
* Jared Sparks, Gouverneur Morris, ii. 117. Morris to Washing-
ton, Paris, 22nd November, 1790.
† La Fayette, Mémoires, ii. 118.
NECKER'S BOOK UPON THE EXECUTIVE.
461
This powerless monarchy-"which now has become
a mere name and will soon be too costly an article for
the nation"—is compared by Necker with the position
held by the President of the United States, with the
authority possessed by the heads of European Repub-
lics; and he comes to the conclusion that the meaning
of the Executive had simply been forgotten by the
French law-givers. Undermined by the wave of
equality, robbed of the protection afforded by rever-
ence, the throne could not endure without the social
hierarchy. It had been replaced by the sovereignty
of the people resting on pure abstractions. Every
one had asked himself in the presence of this new
ruler which was the surest way of winning its favour.
In accordance with the French national character
it was accomplished by above all flattering its vanity,
by the decree passed on the 19th June, 1790, for the
abolition of the nobility; and, starting from totally
false premises, by making liberty conditional on
equality, whereas all real liberty was negatived by
the unlimited power of the National Assembly, which
in its turn obeyed the popular current in the clubs
and other political associations.*
The description agrees with that of Burke, but
Necker's way out of the labyrinth is not that of
Burke. The latter leaves on one side the much
* Necker, Du pouvoir éxécutif dans les grands Etats, viii. 23, 29,
33, 106, 108, 111, 279, 306, and ix. 290, 294, 379, 578, 582. Com-
pare with Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, Nov. 1790.
Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, v. 469-473.
462
MADAME DE STAËL.
discussed question whether France possessed a con-
stitution, and rather asserts that it had possessed all
the elements of one--nobility, clergy, notables and
orders, corporations and citizens, magistrates and
soldiers-but that it had demolished them all. Necker
agrees with him that confusion alone had ensued and
that reform had been wrecked; but instead of seeking
the remedy in the circumstances to hand he refers to
the far distant British constitution. Contrary to
Necker's views and those of his friends, Madame de
Staël's ideas were strongly inclined towards the Left.
She did not shrink from the depth of the abyss like
Mirabeau; she did not express a sad renunciation of
liberty like Burke and Gouverneur Morris. She knew
nothing of the admission of Mounier and of Malouet,
that a great experiment had failed, and that the class
hatred of the ancien régime had increased into the
mauifold hydra of party hatred. Full of that hope
peculiar to youth, and confident in the present, she
delighted in the struggle and trusted to the future.
She did indeed deprecate faction, but she held it to be
natural that a generation emerging from servitude-to
freedom- should dread nothing so much as a return
to slavery, and should desire beyond all things to
be protected from tyranny.
This tendency to advance showed itself all the more
distinctly in an article written by Madame de Staël,
although unsigned by her, in the paper styled Les Indé-
pendants, and published by Suard and Lacretelle.
It busied itself with investigating the direction to-
MADAME DE STAËL'S OPINIONS.
463
wards which the majority of the nation really inclined,
and decided the question in favour of a middle party
retaining the monarchy as really necessary, although
any return to the ancient usages would be as blamable
as it would be impossible. It considered that the
remedy might be found in the maintenance of a strong
legislative organization, such as Mirabeau desired
when on his death-bed, "to save liberty and equality."
She argued that "there were only two parties in
France, royalists and republicans; why should the
one be condemned to silence and the other to hypo-
crisy, as if it were a question of servitude or sacri-
lege?" The time when monarchical sympathies were
a sort of religion had passed for ever. Royalty now
remained a matter of opinion, and its advantages and
disadvantages must be balanced against each other
like those of any other political institution. Why
should one party attack it and the other defend it?
People treated it like a prejudice instead of analysing
it as a principle.*
Her detailed statement leaves no
doubt that the authoress was not far from deciding in
favour of a republic if it came to be preferred to a
monarchy. It sketched the path she was to tread
during the new phase of the Revolution, which began
in the spring of 1791, shortly before the flight to
Varennes, and closed with the first Girondin ministry.
Both the chances of politics, and those of her fate as
a woman, pointed to this path. She was now separated
* Madame de Staël, A quels signes peut on connaître quelle est
l'opinion de la majorité de la Nation? xvii. 318.
464
MADAME DE STAËL.
5-6
from her father's moderating influence and was under
that of another. Necker must have been thinking to
a certain extent of his daughter, when, in speaking of
what had occurred in France, he says that not only
the State but individual characters were revolu-
tionized.*
* Necker, Du pouvoir éxécutif, dans les grands Etats, viii. 436.
11, HenriettA STREET, Covent Garden, W.C.
APRIL, 1889.
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With Seventy-five Illus-
trations by George Cattermole and H. K. Browne. A New Edition. Uniform with
the other volumes, £1 Is.
BARNABY RUDGE: a Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty. With
Seventy-eight Illustrations by George Cattermole and H. K. Browne. Uniform with
the other volumes, £1 Is.
CHRISTMAS BOOKS: Containing-The Christmas Carol;
The Cricket on the Hearth; The Chimes; The Battle of Life; The Haunted House.
With all the original Illustrations. Cloth, 125.
OLIVER TWIST and TALE OF TWO CITIES. In one
volume. Cloth, £1 IS.
OLIVER TWIST. Separately. With Twenty-four Illustrations
by George Cruikshank. Cloth, IIS.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Separately. With Sixteen Illus-
trations by Phiz. Cloth, 9s.
* * The remainder of Dickens's Works were not originally printed in demy 8vo.
32
BOOKS PUblished BY
...
DICKENS'S (CHARLES) WORKS.—Continued.
LIBRARY EDITION.
In post 8vo. With the Original Illustrations, 30 vols., cloth, £12.
...
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PICKWICK PAPERS
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY
MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT
...
s. d.
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43 Illustrns., 2 vols.
...
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39
"
2 vols.
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16 O
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40
2 vols.
16
OLD CURIOSITY SHOP & REPRINTED PIECES 36
BARNABY RUDGE and HARD TIMES
2 vols.
16
...
BLEAK HOUSE...
...
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36
40
2 vols. 16
"
2 vols. 16
LITTLE DORRIT
DOMBEY AND SON
DAVID COPPERFIELD
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
SKETCHES BY "BOZ"
OLIVER TWIST
...
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40
38
38
2 vols.
16
2 vols.
16
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2 vols.
16
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40
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2 vols.
16
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39
I vol.
8
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24
""
I vol.
8
CHRISTMAS BOOKS
...
...
...
•
A TALE OF TWO CITIES
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
PICTURES FROM ITALY & AMERICAN NOTES 8
UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER
CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
EDWIN DROOD and MISCELLANIES
...
...
...
17
16
I vol.
8
I vol.
8
8
I vol.
8
"
I vol.
8
8
"
I vol.
8
8
"
I vol.
8
12
I vol.
8
"
8 о
CHRISTMAS STORIES from " Household Words," &c. 14
I vol.
THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. BY JOHN FORSTER. With Illustrations.
Uniform with this Edition. IOS. 6d.
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PICKWICK PAPERS
MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT
DOMBEY AND SON
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY
DAVID COPPERFIELD
BLEAK HOUSE
...
LITTLE DORRIT
...
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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND...
BARNABY RUDGE...
OLD CURIOSITY SHOP
...
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...
...
...
...
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
EDWIN DROOD and OTHER STORIES
CHRISTMAS STORIES, from "Household Words
SKETCHES BY "BOZ"
...
AMERICAN NOTES and REPRINTED PIECES
CHRISTMAS BOOKS
OLIVER TWIST
GREAT EXPECTATIONS...
TALE OF TWO CITIES
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4
4
4
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8 Illustrations
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8
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8
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8
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4
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8
6
8
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4
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∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
HARD TIMES and PICTURES FROM ITALY
UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER
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THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. Numerous Illustrations.
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33
DICKENS'S (CHARLES) WORKS.-Continued.
THE
ILLUSTRATED
LIBRARY
LIBRARY EDITION.
(WITH LIFE.)
Complete in 32 Volumes. Demy 8vo, 10s. each; or set, £16.
This Edition is printed on a finer paper and in a larger type than has been
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The collection comprises all the minor writings it was Mr. Dickens's wish to
preserve.
SKETCHES BY "BOZ." With 40 Illustrations by George Cruikshank.
PICKWICK PAPERS.
2 vols. With 42 Illustrations by Phiz.
OLIVER TWIST. With 24 Illustrations by Cruikshank.
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. 2 vols. With 40 Illustrations by Phiz.
OLD CURIOSITY SHOP and REPRINTED PIECES.
trations by Cattermole, &c.
2 vols.
With Illus-
BARNABY RUDGE and HARD TIMES. 2 vols. With Illustrations by
Cattermole, &c.
MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT.
2 vols. With 40 Illustrations by Phiz.
AMERICAN NOTES and PICTURES FROM ITALY.
8 Illustrations.
DOMBEY AND SON. 2 vols. With 40 Illustrations by Phiz.
DAVID COPPERFIELD. 2 vols. With 40 Illustrations by Phiz.
BLEAK HOUSE. 2 vols. With 40 Illustrations by Phiz.
LITTLE DORRIT. 2 vols.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
With 40 Illustrations by Phiz.
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I vol. With
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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 2 vols. With 40 Illustrations by Marcus Stone.
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EDWIN DROOD AND OTHER STORIES With 12 Illustrations by
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LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. By John Forster. With Portraits.
2 vols.
(not separate.)
34
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY
DICKENS'S (CHARLES) WORKS.-Continued.
THE POPULAR LIBRARY EDITION
OF THE WORKS OF
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In 30 Vols., large crown 8vo, price £6; separate Vols. 4s. each.
An Edition printed on good paper, each volume containing 16 full-page
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NICHOLAS NICKLEBY
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DAVID COPPERFIELD.
CHRISTMAS BOOKS.
2 vols.
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 2 vols.
CHRISTMAS STORIES.
BLEAK HOUSE. 2 vols.
LITTLE DORRIT. 2 vols.
OLD CURIOSITY SHOP AND REPRINTED PIECES.
BARNABY RUDGE. 2 vols.
UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
TALE OF TWO CITIES.
CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
EDWIN DROOD AND MISCELLANIES.
PICTURES FROM ITALY AND AMERICAN NOTES.
2 vols
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35
MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT, with 59 Illustrations, cloth, 5s.
DAVID COPPERFIELD, with 60 Illustrations and a Portrait, cloth, 5s.
BLEAK HOUSE, with 61 Illustrations, cloth, 5s.
LITTLE DORRIT, with 58 Illustrations, cloth, 5s.
PICKWICK PAPERS, with 56 Illustrations, cloth, 5s.
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND, with 58 Illustrations, cloth, 5s.
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DOMBEY AND SON, with 61 Illustrations, cloth, 5s.
EDWIN DROOD; REPRINTED PIECES; and other Stories, with 30 Illustra-
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36
BOOKS PUBLISHED BY
DICKENS'S (CHARLES) WORKS.-Continued.
THE CABINET EDITION.
In 32 vols. small fcap. 8vo, Marble Paper Sides, Cloth Backs, with uncut
edges, price Eighteenpence each.
Each Volume contains Eight Illustrations reproduced from the Originals.
CHRISTMAS BOOKS.
MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT, Two Vols.
DAVID COPPERFIELD, Two Vols.
OLIVER TWIST.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, Two Vo's.
SKETCHES BY "BOZ."
CHRISTMAS STORIES.
THE PICKWICK PAPERS, Two Vols.
BARNABY RUDGE, Two Vols.
BLEAK HOUSE, Two Vols.
AMERICAN NOTES AND PICTURES FROM ITALY.
EDWIN DROOD; AND OTHER STORIES.
THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP, Two Vols.
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND
DOMBEY AND SON, Two Vols.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
LITTLE DORRIT, Two Vols.
MUTUAL FRIEND, Two Vols.
HARD TIMES.
UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.
REPRINTED PIECES.
NEW & CHEAP ISSUE OF THE WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS.
In Pocket Volumes.
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OLD CURIOSITY SHOP, with 8 Illustrations, cloth, 2s.
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37
DICKENS'S (CHARLES) WORKS.-Continued.
MR. DICKENS'S READINGs.
Fcap. 8vo, sewed.
CHRISTMAS CAROL IN PROSE. IS.
CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. IS.
CHIMES: A GOBLIN STORY.
IS.
STORY OF LITTLE DOMBEY. IS.
POOR TRAVELLER, BOOTS AT THE HOLLY-TREE
INN, and MRS. GAMP. IS.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL, with the Original Coloured Plates.
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Illustrated by JOHN LEECH, D. MACLISE, R.A., R. .Doyle,
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A CHRISTMAS CAROL IN PROSE.
THE CHIMES: A Goblin Story.
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH: A Fairy Tale of
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THE BATTLE OF LIFE. A Love Story.
THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST'S STORY.
SIXPENNY
REPRINTS.
READINGS FROM THE WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS.
As selected and read by himself and now published for the first time. Illustrated
A CHRISTMAS CAROL, AND THE HAUNTED MAN.
By CHARLES DICKENS. Illustrated.
THE CHIMES: A GOBLIN STORY, AND THE CRICKET
ON THE HEARTH. Illustrated.
THE BATTLE OF LIFE: A LOVE STORY, HUNTED
DOWN, AND A HOLIDAY ROMANCE. Illustrated.
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I. ANIMAL PHYSIOLOGY 1887 By J. H. E. Brock, M.D., B.S. (Lond.),
F.R.C.S. (Eng.), D.P. H. (Lond.)
1888
2. BUILDING CONSTRUCTION 1887
""
1888
3. THEORETICAL MECHANICS, 1887
""
1888
4. INORGANIC CHEMISTRY (Theo- Į
retical), 1887
INORGANIC CHEMISTRY (Theo-
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1887
Ditto-ALTERNATIVE COURSE
1888
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MAGNETISM AND ELECTRICITY
H. Adams, C.E., M.I. M. E.
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Rev. F. W. Harnett, M.A.
J. J. Pilley,
F.R.M.S.
J. Howard, F.C.S.
Ph.D., F.C.S.,
7. PHYSIOGRAPHY
...
""
1887
W. Hibbert, F.I.C., A.I.E.E.
1888
1887
1888
W. Rheam, B.Sc.
1887
H. Angel.
1888
...
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PRACTICAL PLANE AND SOLID
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PER-
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1888
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H. Carter, B. A.
1887
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12. PRINCIPLES OF AGRICULTURE
PRINCIPLES OF AGRICULTURE
1888
...
1887
Dr. H. J. Webb, B.Sc.
""
13. SOUND, LIGHT, AND HEAT, 1887
14. HYGIENE
1888
1888
C. A. Stevens.
""
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1887
...
1888
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...
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1887
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•
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