Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/284

 276 MADAME DE STAEL AND NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. despots, I will give a few of the sentences ordered to be suppressed. Speaking of the reforms instituted by the Emperor Joseph of Austria, Madame de Stael had ven- tured this terrible observation : " But after his death, nothing remained of what he had established ; since nothing endures except what comes progressively." The first half of this sentence she was required to cut out. The reader will not be at a loss to guess why. It was just four years after, that the French empire, which never seemed so strong as in 1810, proved the truth of the latter half, which was allowed to stand. The sen- tence following excited the ire of the censors : " A witty woman has remarked that, of all places in the world, Paris is the one where a person can best do without happiness." The gentleman who marked this sentence for suppres- sion condescended to give a reason for so doing. Under the reign of the emperor, he said, there was " so much happiness at Paris that no one need do without it." In discoursing upon Frederick the Great, she said, that a powerful man, so long as he lived, could hold together the most discordant elements ; " but at his death, they separate." The last phrase was suppressed, the emperor having just taken an important step to prevent the separa- tion of discordant elements at his death. He had divorced Josephine, and married Marie-Louise. She denounced the partition of Poland, and added this comment : "It can never be expected that subjects thus obtained, will be faithful to the trickster who calls himself their sovereign." Suppressed of course. The following also was sum- marily cut : " Good taste in literature is, in some respects, like order