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78 charged with suppressed fire, was so likely to provoke a reaction as the influence of Madame de Staël—a woman of amazing talent, of high position, and great wealth; notoriously disinterested, and, although ever true to her principles, yet strongly swayed by personal influences.

Moreover, she represented the Opposition. Let anybody consider what public opinion is, even in wellordered England, how it reverses in a moment the best laid plans of Ministers, and it becomes easy to understand how, in revolutionary France, a new thought emanating from Madame de Staël's salon could prove gravely dangerous to Napoleon. In exiling her, he only treated her as she had been treated already. If he found her in France on coming to power, it was because she had been reconciled to the Directory; but there never was the least chance of her becoming reconciled to him.

There are several very womanly touches in Madame de Staël's own account of her relations with Napoleon. Here is one of them, relating apparently to a time when the aversion between the First Consul and his illustrious foe had become an accomplished but not an acknowledged fact. Madame de Staël was invited to General Berthier's one evening when it was known that Napoleon would be present.

"As I knew," she says, "that he spoke very ill of me, it struck me that he would address me with some of the rude things which he often liked to say to women, even to those who flattered him; and I wrote down on chance, before going to the party, the different stinging and spirited replies which I could make to his speeches. I did not wish to be taken by surprise if he insulted me, for that would have been a greater want