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134 plea that he had pronounced the Phœdra of Euripides to be superior to that of Racine! Madame de Staël went to Aix for the sake of her youngest son's health, but at the end of ten days was recalled by a letter from the Prefect, who advised her not to venture more than two leagues from Coppet. Very naturally she was irritated to the last degree and often deeply distressed at all these incidents. The exile imposed on Mathieu de Montmorency and Madame Récamier caused her the greatest grief, more especially as she never doubted but that unwittingly she was the cause. She had other causes of suffering also in her health at the time, and doubtless was far from being as brilliant as of yore.

Circumstances (she had a son by Rocca in 1812) condemned her to an isolation which fretted her almost beyond endurance; and Sismondi, not possessing the key to the situation, was aggrieved at her sombre mood and nervous irritability. He wrote that he sometimes "bores himself" at Coppet (O Ichabod!); and he was reduced to take refuge with sundry amiable persons at Geneva who soothed his wounded self-love.

At last Madame de Staël—inconsolable for the loss of Schlegel's society, panting to escape beyond the narrow limits of Coppet, where her sons had no career before them, and her daughter no chance of marrying, and she herself was harassed by hints and admonitions from the Prefect at every turn—resolved upon escape. She was informed through Schlegel, who was in Berne at the time, that if she would even now write something in praise of Napoleon her fate would be considerably mitigated. It is no slight credit to her that, agitated and ill as she was,