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Rh was extended over my life." For the moment, either this beneficent influence, or, as is more likely, a passing fit of good humour on the part of Napoleon, enabled her to enjoy existence. Fouché consented to recall several émigrés for whom she interceded, and even Joseph Bonaparte once again treated her with cordiality, and entertained her for a little time at his estate at Morfontaine.

A variety of circumstances arose to put an end to this state of things and to revive Napoleon's dislike to Madame de Staël. Her father published his work, Dernières Vues de Politique et de Finance, with the avowed intention of protesting against Napoleon's growing tyranny. His daughter had encouraged him in this feeling, herself unable, as she declares, to silence this "Song of the Swan." Then Bernadotte had inaugurated a certain sullen opposition to the First Consul, and Madame de Staël immediately became his friend. Finally, her salon was more crowded than ever, and by great personages, such as the Prince of Orange and other embryo potentates, besides foreigners of celebrity in letters and science.

Napoleon detested salons. It was his conviction that a woman who disposed of social influence might do anything in France, inasmuch as he held that the best brains in the country were female. Madame de Staël, moreover, possessed the art of keeping herself well before the public. Even now she had just published Delphine, and all the papers were full of it. To please Napoleon, they condemned it as immoral—a strange criticism in that age, and an excellent advertisement in any.

Napoleon, on Madame de Staël's again visiting Switzerland, hinted to Lebrun that she would do well not