Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/119

Rh minority admirably, and made allies for herself among the best German intellects. Thanks to her, her son Karl August had been so trained, that, in the midst of a court circle to which the light of the eighteenth century had barely penetrated, he showed a most manly contempt for the ideals of mistresses of the robes and silver sticks in waiting, and swept all such fripperies away to become the dearest friend of Goethe. His duchess (whose courage both extorted Napoleon's admiration and saved her husband from further proofs of his ire) was a woman of grand character, and as great a contrast, except in what was really best in both of them, to her lively mother-in-law as could well be imagined. She insisted on the most uncompromising observance of etiquette, and wore to the last day of her life the costume which had prevailed in the years when she was young.

Of this remarkable trio of exalted personages it was the reigning duchess whom Madame de Staël selected for her friend. Indeed, she never mentions the Dowager Duchess in corresponding with the daughter-in-law, and in her Allemagne dismisses the Grand Duke with a few lines, in which she alludes to his military talents and speaks of his conversation as piquante and thoughtful.

From Weimar, Madame de Staël went to Berlin, with letters from their highnesses of the little court to the lovely and charming Queen Louise.

In a well-known letter to the Grand Duchess (the first of their long correspondence), she records a fête which took place immediately after her arrival. It was a masquerade representing Alexander's return to Babylon; and the beautiful queen, of whom Madame de Staël is lost in admiration, danced in it herself.