"And, of course, you blame me?"
"No; it is a trial like others. When the king shall have tried all, he may finish by the one with whom he should have commenced."
"You know Madame de Stael? What do you think of her?"
"Physically, she is not altogether attractive."
The queen smiled; as a woman, she was not sorry to hear another woman decried who just then was widely talked about.
"But her talent, her parts, her merits?"
"She is good and generous, madame; none of her enemies would remain so after a quarter of an hour's conversation."
"I speak of her genius, sir; politics are not managed by the heart."
"Madame, the heart spoils nothing, not even in politics; but let us not use the word genius rashly. Madame de Stael has great and immense talent, but it does not rise to genius; she is as iron to the steel of her master, Rousseau. As a politician, she is given more heed than she deserves. Her drawing-room is the meeting-place of the English party. Coming of the middle class as she does, and that the money-worshiping middle class, she has the weakness of loving a lord; she admires the English from thinking that they are an aristocratic people. Being ignorant of the history of England, and the mechanism of its government, she takes for the descendants of the Norman Conquerors the baronets created yesterday. With old material, other people make a new stock; with the new, England often makes the old."
"Do you see in this why Baroness de Stael proposes De Narbonne to us?"