Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/137

Rh this fact, probably with various others, some true, some false, to the Minister of Police, who wrote to the Prefect of the department to complain that his master's celebrated foe was the centre of a little court. In a short time the blow fell. No answer came from Napoleon, but, instead of it, the announcement that her book had been seized, that all copies of it were destroyed, and that the authoress was to leave France within three days either for America or Coppet. At the same time, the Prefect of Loir and Cher demanded the surrender of the MS. of the work. Fortunately Madame de Staël possessed a rough copy, which she gave him, while her son saved the real one.

She wrote to Savary, Duke of Rovigo ("permitted," she says bitingly "to hide his name under a title"), and represented to him that the interval allowed her for her departure was insufficient. She received a reply which has become classic for its baseness, its insolence, and its ludicrous arrogance. All the littleness and none of the force of Napoleon was reflected from the mind of his underling. He told her that she need not seek for the cause of her exile in the silence regarding the Emperor which she had observed in her work; for that no place in it could have been found worthy of him! For the rest, the air of France did not suit her, and as for its inhabitants they were not yet reduced to taking as models the nations whom she admired. Her last work was not French, and it was he (this worthy official) who had forbidden it to be printed.

Savary thus claimed for himself, and not for his master, the glory of this precious proceeding; but as nobody suspected him of acting except under orders, he blew this trumpet to the desert air.