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 woman 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 without divining the cause, was the passionate and unappeasable desire to be loved. All men who had dealings with her appear to have misunderstood her in so far that they believed her to be more dominated by her head than her heart—instead of understanding that, in her, head and heart were the systole and diastole of a temperament surprisingly forcible but not essentially strong. Or, if they did learn to comprehend her better at last, it was when she was no longer young, and feeling of a certain sort had become, alas! ridiculous. As long as she was entitled to feel and to suffer they made almost a reproach to her of the intellectual superiority which they could not deny, and cast her back upon her own thoughts for happiness.
Madame de Krüdener, on one occasion, arrived at the complacent conclusion that Madame de Staël was jealous of her. Not jealous of her beauty and golden locks, which was conceivable, and might have been true, but jealous of her literary fame! Corinne jealous of Valerie! It is true that Corinne had not yet seen the light, while Valerie had not only appeared, but had met with great success. So great an authority as St. Beuve pronounces Madame de Krüdener’s novel to be a thing of joy, a work to be read thrice, “in youth, in middle life, and in old age.” But it is possible to have many intellectual qualities, and yet remain at such an immeasurable distance beneath Madame de Staël that nothing but vanity could scale the height.
Moreover, Madame de Krüdener’s meaner self had not been a stranger to the immediate and surprising triumph of her work. She was always intriguing, and intrigued to some purpose when her novel was on the eve of publication. She ran about to all the fournisseurs in Paris, asking them for bows à la Valerie, caps and gowns à la Valerie.
They heard the name for the first time, but naturally proceeded to call a variety of articles by an appellation presumably so fashionable, and the success of the novel was assured. Madame de Krüdener, promptly and conveniently oblivious of the sources of this sudden triumph, allowed herself to become somewhat intoxicated by it, and wrote to a friend that the “dear woman” (meaning Madame de Staël) was jealous of her. The person at whom this accusation was levelled probably never heard of it. She certainly would never have divined it; and, the little difficulty about Jordan once overcome, she appears to have found Madame de Krüdener’s society more than tolerable. Indeed they ended by becoming affectionate friends; but that was after the authoress of Valerie had undergone the mystic change which transformed her from a flirt into a priestess.
She had always been immensely admired, and had not preserved a spotless reputation. But she had one of those emotional natures in which a restless vanity, love of novelty, a morbid sensibility and an excess of imagination, combine to produce religious fervors.
Standing at a window in Riga one day, she saw an old admirer drop dead at the very moment that he was lifting his hat to salute her. This event made on her one of those terrifying and ineffaceable impressions which in regenerate circles is known as “a call.” She plunged into mysticism; became the exponent of a new dogma, and finally claimed for herself the gift of prophecy. People were, of course, not wanting to declare that her predictions had in several instances been verified; and, her personal fascination remaining always great, she now acquired an enormous influence. Her extreme self-abnegation and boundless charities increased her reputation for sanctity, and she even succeeded in bringing down on herself a satisfactory amount of persecution. In Paris superstition was, as always, rife. The days were not yet so remote when Philip Egalité had gone to question the devil in the quarries of Montrouge; and men were barely more than middle-aged who in their first youth had looked on the brazen brow of Cagliostro, and felt their blood agreeably frozen by the Comte de St. Germain’s casual mention of personal experiences three hundred years old. But little more than thirty years previous to Madame de Krüdener’s “revival” Mesmer had seen numbers of the fairest and many not of the stupidest heads in Paris gathered round his famous baquet. A little later the illuminati had been credited unveraciously and to their scant honor, with a share in the sanguinary priesthood of Robespierre, and finally Mademoiselle Lenormand had shuffled the cards of prophecy at the instance of Napoleon himself. Into this strange world, so exhausted and cynical, yet excited, impulsive, and thirsting for novel emotions, the Northern Sybil, with her strange, pale face and shining eyes, came like a wandering star.
But all this was subsequent to our first meeting with her at Coppet, when she was still fairly young and singularly pretty, and the gold in her tresses owed as yet no fancied splendor to the aureole of inspiration.
Madame Récamier, the charming Juliette, was a far more normal, but a not less attractive person. Châteaubriand’s memoirs have made her famous, but he was among the latest of her many swains. Her path through life was strewn with conquests, and she had offers of marriage by the score. They continued up to the age of fifty-one, when the author of Réné laid a heart which was hardly worthy of her at her feet.
Three generations of Montmorencys adored her; a German prince of royal blood urged her to divorce her husband in order to marry him; and Lucian Bonaparte was among the most ardent of her slaves. Ampère the younger, at twenty, fell in love with her, she being then forty-three; and Châteaubriand addressed her as “très belle et très charmante” when she was seventy and blind. The little Savoyards turned round in the streets to look at her, and when they did so no longer she knew that her marvellous beauty was on the wane. But the fascination of her grace, her goodness, her unfailing tact and delicate intelligence survived her loveliness; and the men who knew her still worshipped her for years after fresher charms had attracted the eyes of the multitude. She was not a politician, but her friendship with Madame de Staël gave her decided opinions, and she incurred the anger of Napoleon by declining to be Dame du Palais to one of his sisters. It was said, however, that what specially raised his ire was that a throng which on one occasion had been assembled to do homage to him, so far forgot his presence, when Madame Récamier appeared, as to have eyes only for her.
Finally Constant, the inexplicable, unhappy, brilliant Constant, sought the peace which he had never found in anyone in a tardy passion for her. He sought in vain, for she treated him as she treated all men, with a kind and gracious indifference which her unique fascination robbed of all its sting. She influenced his political conduct—not altogether for good, as it turned out in 1814, when Napoleon returned from Elba. Vague hints at a rivalry before this date between her and Madame de Staël are to be found in some of the correspondence of the time, but they are contradicted by the tone of Madame de Staël’s letters to her belle Juliette, and by Madame Récamier’s own rare discretion.