Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/98

88 contains an invitation to him to join her and one or two other friends in a journey to Italy, coupled with a playful hint that in such scenes he might find her society more agreeable than the lovely blonde's. Camille not responding in the way desired, Madame de Staël betrays some wounded feeling. She had thought that when once she had admired Jordan's writings so much, everything must be in harmony between them. She had been mistaken. She would take refuge in silence. Nevertheless she is not silent; and Madame de Krüdener's name reappears. Madame de Staël is willing to admit that she is a remarkable person, but objects that she is always talking of persons who have killed themselves for love of her. Then Jordan is summoned to say if it be true that he is in love, not with Madame, but with Mademoiselle de Krüdener? She has nothing but a Greuze-like face to recommend her, and if she has enthralled him then why has he not fallen a victim to every young girl of fifteen? Nevertheless, if he really be in love, and will confess it, Madame de Staël will set herself to study Mademoiselle de Krüdener better, with a view to loving her herself if she prove indeed worthy of Jordan's affection.

In reading all this, one is forced to the conclusion that a more emotional woman than Madame de Staël never trod the earth. Every human creature, perhaps, has one unsolved—it may be insoluble riddle in his life—one mystery of feeling which nobody fathoms. More especially is this true of women who live so much in sentiment; and supremely true of a women like Madame de Staël. That ineffable something in her which nobody seems to have guessed while she was living, of which Byron felt the presence in her