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34 bad," she wrote to the reactionary and angry Gustavus; and thus betrayed that preoccupation with the individual, his virtues or his crimes, which, for all her intellect, blinded her not rarely to the essential significance of things.

With breathless interest and varied feelings of sympathy and indignation she watched the great events which now followed in rapid succession. Her father was monarchical, and believed that a representative monarchy on the English model was the true remedy for France. Madame de Staël—incapable of differing with so great a man—endorsed this opinion at the time, although eventually she became republican.

But nobody was republican then—that is in name; people had not yet realised to what logical conclusions their opinions would carry them. Madame de Staël, hating oppression, blamed the sightless obstinacy of the nobles, but, on the other hand, was but little moved by the famous Serment du Jeu de Paume. She deplored the rejection of Necker's plan—that happy medium which was to settle everything, and stigmatised as it deserved the imbecility of the Court party, as illustrated by confidence in foreign regiments and the Declaration of the 23rd June. Always optimist, and confident of the inevitable triumph of Right over Might, she clung to the belief that a thoroughly pure character, in such a crisis, was the one indispensable element of success.

The mysterious nature of Sièyes repelled her; she preferred the virtuous Malouet to the titanic Mirabeau, and was almost as blind as her father to the enormous electric force of the tribune's undisciplined genius. For if often prejudiced, she rarely was morbid, and false ideas did not dazzle her. No splendour of achievement