Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/178

168 "Virtue" and still "virtue" and more "virtue" was her cry, as though "virtue" were a tangible and definitely constituted thing to be extracted en bloc out of the materials composing humanity. To such a mind it was inevitable that Emile and the Contrat Social should appeal more strongly than any number of witty epigrams at the expense of penitents and priests.

She sympathised with the philosophy of the eighteenth century in so far as it tended, by uprooting abuses, to promote the progress of culture and the emancipation of the oppressed, but she required some system that would reconstruct as well as destroy; and, being a fervid believer in theories, disliked nothing so much as the idea of leaving the human race to take care of itself. Rousseau, as embodying a protest against the spirit of frivolous negation, appeared to her in the light of a prophet of perfection; and she saw in the approaching meeting of the States General a first step towards the realisation of his views. These radiant ideals were destined to be suddenly and painfully obscured by the events of the Terror. Her only contribution to literature during that time was her celebrated and impassioned defence of the unhappy Queen. Public events so fascinated her attention that she had no leisure for any other thought. Two sentences in her Réflexions sur la Paix, published in 1794, reveal this preoccupation.

"During the reign of Robespierre," she says, "when each day brought a list of devoted victims, I could only desire death, and long for the end of the world and of the human race which was witness to, or accomplice in, such horrors. I should have made a reproach to myself even of thought, because it was