"Madame de Staël was a perfect aristocrat, and her sympathies were wholly with the great and prosperous. She saw nothing in England but the luxury, stupidity, and pride of the Tory aristocracy, and the intelligence and magnificence of the Whig aristocracy. These latter talked about truth, and liberty and herself, and she supposed it was all as it should be. As to the millions, the people, she never inquired into their situation. She had a horror of the canaille, but anything of sangre asul had a charm for her. When she was dying she said, 'Let me die in peace; let my last moments be undisturbed.' Yet she ordered the cards of every visitor to be brought to her. Among them was one from the Duc de Richelieu. 'What!' exclaimed she indignantly, 'What! have you sent away the Duke? Hurry! Fly after him. Bring him back. Tell him that, though I die for all the world, I live for him.'"
Napoleon's hatred of her was intense. "Do not allow that jade, Madame de Staël," he writes to Fouché, December 31, 1806 (
New Letters of Napoleon I.
, p. 35), "to come near Paris." Again, March 15, 1807 (
ibid.
, p. 39), "You are not to allow Madame de Staël to come within forty leagues of Paris. That wicked schemer ought to make up her mind to behave herself at last." In a third letter, April 19, 1807 (
ibid.
, p. 40), he speaks of her as "paying court, one day to the great—a patriot, a democrat, the next!... a fright, ... a worthless woman" (Léon Lecestre's
Lettres inédites de Napoléon I'er
, 2nd ed. vol. i. pp. 84, 88, 93).