Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/129

Rh hand to be kissed rather oftener, and I send you all the homage which I receive."

In another she significantly remarks:—

"The Prince de Ligne is really amiable and good above all things. He has the manners of M. de Narbonne, and a heart. It is a pity he is old, but all that generation fill me with an invincible tenderness."

This is one of her touching allusions to her father, of whom all "good grey heads" reminded her. But the Prince de Ligne and Necker were two very different people. The former was the ideal of a grand seigneur, clever, brave, handsome, all in a supreme degree; the descendant of a chivalrous race, and as gallant and noble himself as any of them. He was extremely witty, and quickly achieved the conquest of the Empress Catherine when he was sent on a mission to Russia in 1782. He followed in her suite through the Crimea on the occasion of her famous journey there with Joseph II., and his amusing account of this expedition is one of his claims to literary reputation. The last years of his brilliant life were embittered by the loss of his property, consequent on the French invasion of Belgium, and by the death in battle of his eldest and best-beloved son.

Madame de Staël probably enjoyed his society all the more that the Viennese gentlemen appeared to her singularly uninteresting. She complained of them in her letters to the Grand Duchess of Weimar, and also to Madame Récamier, and declared that she felt the need of a summer at Coppet to indemnify her for the frivolous monotony of the Austrian capital. She seems to have been in an unusually depressed state of mind, and recurred perpetually to the hardships of exile.

In April 1808, shortly before starting again for