Villemain has left a record of the evening of the 18th March 1815, which he passed in the salon of the Countess Rumford, and where he met Madame de Staël. Several famous, and to us now familiar, personages were present—Lafayette, Constant, Jaucourt, Cuvier, Sismondi, and Lemercier among others. Every moment somebody arrived with news of the advancing hero. Madame de Staël came late, and instantly attracted the general attention to herself. She was overwhelmed with sadness, but more for France even than for herself. She had been at the Tuileries, and found that there all hope of resistance was abandoned. Her own mind was made up for flight, yet she urged Madame de Rumford to remain, showing that she considered Napoleon’s hatred of herself to be inextinguishable and as active as ever. In point of fact, Napoleon’s earliest care, on reaching the capital, was to express his regret at her departure. It is very unlikely that he would have molested her in any way had she remained; but it was ordained that, to the last, he should make her suffer even more in imagination than in reality. She urged Madame Récamier to escape with her, for, Juliette’s prescription never having been formally revoked, Madame de Staël considered her danger as great as her own. But Madame Récamier, more calm, refused. With her remained also Benjamin Constant, although he also was admonished by Madame de Staël to seek safety in another land. His career during the Hundred Days is well known. He began by attacking Napoleon violently, then had an interview with him, was fascinated, converted, appointed a councillor of state, and helped to edit the Acte Additionnel. Another convert was the sober-minded Sismondi, and several people have asserted, on the authority first of an English editor, and then of M. Thiers, that the great, the irreconcilable “Corinne” herself, gave in a tardy but complete adhesion. Ste. Beuve endorsed the error, and based his belief upon the style of an unsigned note in French found among Lord Castlereagh’s posthumous papers, and attributed by Lord Londonderry’s secretary to Madame de Staël. This letter was supposed to have been written at Coppet and forwarded to Mr. Crawford, the American Minister in Paris, in order that he might take it to London. Its object was to inspire English statesmen with the writer’s own belief in Napoleon’s new-found sincerity, and to recommend his government to their support.
A comparison of dates shows, however, that such a letter, if despatched from Coppet, could only have reached Paris twenty-four hours after Mr. Crawford’s departure, and Thiers’ assumption that Madame de Staël remained in Paris during the Hundred Days is disproved by her correspondence from Switzerland with Madame Récamier. Finally, and again according to Thiers, Sismondi’s conversion was a result of Madame de Staël’s own change of views. But this also appears quite untenable, inasmuch as Sismondi himself bears testimony to her resentment against Napoleon, strengthened, as he says, “to a blind and violent hatred.” This is the natural language of a person who has veered about of another person who has not, and the expression occurs in a letter of Sismondi’s written from Coppet a short time after Waterloo, and when he had gone to the château in some doubt as to the nature of the reception there awaiting him. He had been much relieved to find his hostess as cordial as ever. Madame de Staël, indeed, never seems to have willingly or spontaneously given up any friend whom she had once admitted to the title. Politics are apt to envenom the most intimate relations, but they left no bitterness in her great and gentle soul. Alas! the happy days at Coppet were numbered now for most of those whom we have seen congregating there through so many exciting summers.
Madame de Staël delighted in the exercise of a generous hospitality. Nobody ever seems to have managed her business affairs better than she did, and among the few apparent contradictions of her transparent nature was the spirit of order in which she dealt with life, as soon as the things presented to her consideration were hard facts and not sentiments. In all administrative matters she had the capacity of a true Frenchwoman, and, while systematic and careful, was the least avaricious of women.
CHAPTER XIV.
CLOSING SCENES.
After Waterloo, Madame de Staël did not return to France. The thought of the second occupation by foreign troops was odious to her, and, besides this, she feared the outbreak of reactionary feelings, and foresaw a political condition in which her pure and ideal liberalism would be equally unwelcome to all parties.
Rocca’s state of health finally induced her to go to Italy. From Milan she sent a letter to Madame Récamier, which is interesting as showing how little her fine mind and noble heart were in harmony just then with the condition of affairs in France.
“You are kind enough to say to me,” she wrote, “that I should do better to be in Paris. But no, indeed, I should not care to see some forms of liberty (franchises) ‘accorded’ to the people, for it is my creed that nations are born free. I should say unfashionable things and make enemies unnecessarily. When all is arranged for Albertine’s marriage, I shall lead a solitary life in Paris; but at present I do well, believe me, to have myself represented by Auguste. Like you, I think well, and better than ever, of Victor de Broglie, and I shall be very glad of the marriage if nothing goes against it. I am also of your way of thinking in regard to Madame de Krüdener. She is the herald of a great oncoming religious epoch. Speak of me to her, I beg, as of a person quite devoted to her.… M. Rocca’s health still gives me anxiety. I have never recovered any happiness since Bonaparte disembarked.”
Madame de Staël had been very happy in her marriage with Rocca, and the tenderness with which she regarded him was manifest to all her acquaintances. Under such circumstances, it does seem strange that she should to the last have kept her marriage with him a secret.