Page:Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse.djvu/24

Rh military science in Europe. In it were generous, or as we should say in these days, advanced ideas. He discussed the great Frederick's system of war. He competed at the Acade- my on subjects of patriotic eulogy ; he had tragedies in his desk on national subjects. " He aims at nothing less," said La Harpe, " than replacing Turenne, Corneille, and Bossuet." It would be very easy at this date, but not very just, to make a caricature of M. de Guibert, a man whom every one, begin- ning with Voltaire, considered at his dawn as vowed to glory and grandeur, and who kept the pledge so insufficiently. Abortive hero of that epoch of Louis XVI. which gave Trance naught but promises, M. de Guibert entered the world, his head high and on the footing of a genius ; it was, so to speak, his speciality to have genius, and you will not find a writer of his day who does not use the word in rela- tion to him. " A soul," they cried, " which springs on all sides towards fame."

This was an attitude difficult to maintain, and the fall, at last, was all the more bitter to him. Let us admit, however, that a man who could be loved to such a point by Mile, de Lespinasse, and who, subsequently, had the honour of first occupying the heart of Mme. de Stael, must have had those eager, animated qualities which belong to personality, and mislead the judgment as to deeds so long as their father is present. M. de Guibert had the qualities that exhilarate, excite, and impress ; he had his full value in a brilliant cir- cle ; but he chilled quickly and was out of place in the bosom of intimacy. In the order of sentiments he had the emotion, the tumult, the din of passion, but not its warmth.

Mile, de Lespinasse, who ended by judging him as he was and by estimating his just weight without being able to cease loving him, began, in the first instance, by admiration. " Love," it is said, " begins usually by admiration, and it sur-