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156 given up any friend whom she had once admitted to the title. Politics are apt to envenom the most intimate relations, but they left no bitterness in her great and gentle soul. Alas! the happy days at Coppet were numbered now for most of those whom we have seen congregating there through so many exciting summers.

Madame de Staël delighted in the exercise of a generous hospitality. Nobody ever seems to have managed her business affairs better than she did, and among the few apparent contradictions of her transparent nature was the spirit of order in which she dealt with life, as soon as the things presented to her consideration were hard facts and not sentiments. In all administrative matters she had the capacity of a true Frenchwoman, and, while systematic and careful, was the least avaricious of women.