Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/93

Rh return to Paris she avers that she did not find Napoleon's wrath at all appeased. Apparently she expected it to die a spontaneous death, for she did not adopt the only means by which she could have pacified him, but continued to applaud, if not instigate, an active hostility to his measures. It would have been grand and magnanimous of Napoleon to have despised the enmity of a woman, but he was neither grand nor magnanimous. Moreover, the last thing which Madame de Staël probably desired was to be despised. Nobody can deny her the meed of admiration which she deserved for her love of liberty, and the indomitable spirit with which, when in exile, she refused to conciliate her oppressor by one word of praise. But, inasmuch as she knew with whom she had to deal, and what would be the consequence of her actions, one must admit that the amount of pity which she claimed for herself, and has generally received, is excessive. She was in direct contradiction to her own theories of a woman's true duty, when interfering in politics; and in being treated by Napoleon as a man might have been, she paid the penalty of the splendid intellect which emancipated her from the habits and the views, if not from the weaknesses, of her sex. She was neither helpless nor harmless, since she could stir up enemies to the tyrant by her eloquence, and revenge herself, when punished, by the power of her pen. She was exiled not because she was a woman and defenceless, but because she was a genius and formidable. She deliberately engaged in a contest of which the object was to prove who was the stronger—herself or Napoleon.

She came out of it scarred, but dauntless. What right had she to complain because the weapons that wounded her were keen?