Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/48

38 altogether remains an abiding witness to her faith and courage. She was wounded in her tenderest part by the Court's ingratitude and the Assembly's indifference towards her father. Every natural and cultivated sentiment in her was wounded by what she saw. Unlike Madame Roland, she had no traditions and no past of her own to attach her, in spite of everything, to the people. She was insensible to the merely physical infection of enthusiasm, and never even for a moment possessed by the vertigo of the revolutionary demon-dance. She remained, from first to last, an absolute stranger to every act and every consideration that was not either manifest to her intellect or strong in appeal to her heart; and yet such was her force of mind and rectitude of insight that, under the Directory, we shall find her no less interested in public events than under the Monarchy.

The grief that Madame de Staël undoubtedly experienced at her father's banishment was not destined to be of long duration. He had hardly reached the Hôtel des Trois Rois at Bâle, when, to his great astonishment, Madame de Polignac asked to speak to him. She was the last person that he expected to see there; but surprise at her presence was soon swallowed up in the far greater amazement excited by all she had to tell. The taking of the Bastille; the massacre of Foulon and Berthier and De Launay; the critical position of De Besenval, and the stampede of the aristocrats—what a catalogue of events! He had never, his daughter says, admitted the possibility of proscriptions, and he was a long while before he could understand the motives which had induced Madame de Polignac to depart. He had not much time to reflect on all he had heard before letters