Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/105

Rh ," "you are beautiful'" "you reign as a queen over sentiment," are among the sentences that stud every other line of her letters. Another of her female friends was she whom she named the "sweet Annette de Gérando," the wife of the author of The Signs and Art of Thinking in their Mutual Relations, the Origin of Human Intelligence, the Comparative History of Philosophic Systems, &c. He was a philanthropist as well as a philosopher, and Madame de Staël in later years once made rather a bitter allusion to this fact. As time went on, and Napoleon's star blazed brighter, De Gérando was unable to resist the general infection of idolatry; moreover, he had accepted a post under the new Government, and the withering blight of officialism fell to a certain extent on his spirit. "There is too much philanthropy in his friendship," wrote Madame de Staël to Jordan. "One is afraid of being treated by him like a pauper."

But in the summer of 1801 all this was still in the future, and harmony and wit reigned at Coppet. Sismondi about this time appears on the scene; discreet, observant, serene, reasonable, he conceived for Madame de Staël a friendship which remained moderate in expression and sincere in feeling to the last. He was not as much dazzled by her as many, and saw her failings clearly. Occasionally she even wounded his quiet self-love, and once or twice, when very restless and excited, she offended him. But he was invariably drawn back to her by the spell of her goodness. He appears as a rock of strength amid all the sparkling, moving, changing tide of ideas and feelings that rippled, dashed, recoiled, and returned unceasingly in every hour of the sojourn at Coppet. His steady sense and calm judgment bring out into