Werner had had a Sturm und Drang period of extreme dissipation, had taken to Freemasonry, and imbibed, apparently, some of the ideas of the Illuminati; and, besides his mysticism in religion, inclined to socialism in politics. After all this vagueness of thought, joined to a highly impressionable and very vivid temperament, it is not surprising to learn that he eventually became a Roman Catholic priest and rose to great renown as a preacher.
Oehlenschläger has left a spiteful picture of Werner, with his nose full of snuff, discussing his esoteric doctrines in an execrable patois which was intended for French. Both poets, however, united in admiring and praising, almost worshipping, Madame de Staël, and she on her side seems to have cared little for any peculiarity in their habits as long as there was originality in their characters.
It was during this visit of the two poets at Coppet that Karl Ritter appeared for a short time on the scene. He enjoyed a great reputation in Germany, being considered as the inventor of the Science of Comparative Geography. He was also a gentle, earnest man, and became extremely religious in his old age. He records an animated, indeed perfervid and amazingly eloquent, speech pronounced before him by Madame de Staël in favor of the metaphysical origin of religion, and in answer to Sismondi who maintained that its basis should be reasoned morality. Madame de Staël declared that religion was the condition of virtue; and that without it there could be no higher life, by which she meant no communion with God. In support of this thesis she displayed the most surprising power both of analysis and illustration, while her logic appearing to Ritter unanswerable, caused the discussion, as he avers, to be an epoch in his intellectual life. This new interest of Madame de Staël in such questions was largely due to the ever-growing influence of Madame de Krüdener, now irrevocably “regenerate” and rapidly rising to fame as a priestess and prophetess, while leading a life of the utmost asceticism. She had been in Coppet again, and had left there the trail of her sacerdotal tendencies. Poor Bonstetten, daily growing younger in mind and heart, was comically disgusted at the change which was coming over the intellectual life at the Château. The confusion of dogmas prevailing could not console him for the fact of there being any dogmas at all. Between Catholics, Boehmists, Martinists and Mystics, he appeared at times to be quite worn out, and attributed the whole revolution to the influence of his pet aversion Schlegel. How he made this out is not very clear, for the theological spirit was as cosmopolitan in its representatives as varied in its forms. Mathieu de Montmorency was a Catholic, somebody else a Quietist, a third an Illuminist, while Rationalism was left to the doubtful prowess of Baron Voght, who was reported by Bonstetten to be as gyratory in his opinions as a weathercock.
We now approach an event in Madame de Staël’s life so well known and so often recounted, that it will not be necessary to relate it again in detail. This was the suppression of her Allemagne, Napoleon’s crowning act of meanness, and a deed which obtained for Madame de Staël the entire and unquestioning sympathy of every enlightened mind and generous heart.
Madame de Staël determined, after some hesitation, to publish the work in Paris, after submitting it in the first instance to the approval of the Imperial Censors. Why she took this unfortunate resolution it is difficult to conceive; for she had been plentifully illuminated with regard to Napoleon’s spite, and even if all her penetration did not enable her to foresee the full lengths to which this would carry him, she might, one would think, have guessed that the censors in Paris would judge her work with the utmost severity.
However this may be, she took up her abode near Blois for the sake of correcting the proofs as they issued from the press. She had, before leaving Coppet, caused her passports to be made out for America, in which country she had property, and whither, for the sake of her children she said, she was gradually making up her mind to go. One cannot imagine Madame de Staël in the New World such as it was in those days; and as she entertained the project for a long while, put it off from month to month, and finally abandoned it altogether, it is more than probable that she never liked it sufficiently to have resolved upon it seriously.
At Blois she established herself first in the famous Château of Chaumont-sur-Loire, haunted by such various memories as the Cardinal d’Amboise, Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medici, and Nostradamus. But the owner of the house shortly returning, she removed to another mansion at Fossé, the home of a M. de Salaberry. She had addressed a letter to Napoleon in which she presented her work to his notice, craved an interview in very respectful terms, and urged on his notice the advantage which it would be for her sons’ career and her daughter’s eventual marriage (Albertine was then thirteen) if she were allowed to reside again in the neighborhood of Paris.
While awaiting the answer to this, she gathered round her a group of her usual friends, among them Madame Récamier, Adrien and Mathieu de Montmorency, Prosper de Barante, and Benjamin Constant. This society amused itself with music (an Italian musician, Albertine’s master, who played the guitar, being of the company), and with a quaint invention named La petite poste. This consisted in abolishing conversation and substituting for it little notes, which were passed from one to the other. A very innocent amusement; but either it, or the guitar-playing, or “Corinne’s” famous name made some noise in the neighborhood.
Finally, one evening Madame de Staël went to the theatre at Blois, and, on leaving it, was surrounded by a curious crowd. Some officious person communicated this fact, probably with various others, some true, some false, to the Minister of Police, who wrote to the Prefect of the department to complain that his master’s celebrated foe was the centre of a little court. In a short time the blow fell. No answer came from Napoleon, but, instead of it, the announcement that her book had been seized, that all copies of it were destroyed, and that the authoress was to leave France within three days either for America or Coppet. At the same time, the Prefect of Loir and Cher demanded the surrender of the MS. of the work. Fortunately Madame de Staël possessed a rough copy, which she gave him, while her son saved the real one.
She wrote to Savary, Duke of Rovigo (“permitted,” she says bitingly “to hide his name under a title”), and represented to him that the interval allowed her for her departure was insufficient. She received a reply which has become classic for its baseness, its insolence, and its ludicrous arrogance. All the littleness and none of the force of Napoleon was reflected from the mind of his underling. He told her that she need not seek for the cause of her exile in the silence regarding the Emperor which she had observed in her work, for that no place in it could have been found worthy of him! For the rest, the air of France did not suit her, and as for its inhabitants, they were not yet reduced to taking as models the nations whom she admired. Her last work was not French, and it was he (this worthy official) who had forbidden it to be printed.