The most plausible reason for such a course, fear of Napoleon’s spite, existed no longer after Waterloo. Why, then, have gratuitously incurred the reproach of an illicit connection? Why, above all, separate herself for five years from her own and Rocca’s child? Such conduct does not on the face of it seem quite consistent with the lofty ideal of duty which Madame de Staël professed.
Albertine’s wedding took place in civil form at Leghorn on February 15th, 1815; and five days later in Pisa a double religious ceremony, one Catholic, the other Protestant, was performed.
All Madame de Staël’s friends gave a charming picture of Albertine. Guizot, Lamartine, and Bonstetten were most enthusiastic about her. Their praises were also echoed by Byron, who, needless to say, was no mean judge; and Ticknor seeing her in Paris about a year after her marriage, never mentioned her except in terms of admiration. She was both beautiful and clever, and, after her mother’s death, became, in her turn, the queen of a cosmopolitan salon.
Accompanied by the bride and bridegroom, by Rocca, by Schlegel and Sismondi, Madame de Staël presently betook herself to Florence, and while there renewed her acquaintance with the Countess of Albany. Alfieri was dead now, and Fabre reigned in his stead. Madame de Staël appears to have adopted him with the mingled enthusiasm and indulgence which she exhibited towards all the tastes of her friends.
The summer of 1816 was spent in Coppet. The newest and most interesting figure there on this occasion was Byron. He had shaken the dust of England from his feet, and was nursing his lyrical cynicism at Cologny near Geneva. Unfortunately, his reputation was so bad that the virtuous society of the place would not know him. Madame de Staël alone not only received but welcomed him. He was grateful; and so far yielded to the influence which this gratitude enabled her to exercise over him as actually to make an imperfect attempt at reconciliation with his wife, in order to please his eloquent and magnanimous hostess.
It is amusing to note the different impressions which Byron—the charming, reprehensible Byron—made upon the various guests at the Château. Bonstetten, as might be expected, was quite fascinated by him, and wrote to Malthasson of his musical voice and beautiful head; and of the “half-honest little demon” that darted in a lambent way through the sarcasm of his speech. Sismondi—the correct and censorious—dwells more especially on Byron’s cynical contempt for appearances, and the conduct and companionship which had brought him into disrepute with the worthy Genevese.
Coppet had never been quite as brilliant, probably, as in this last summer that Madame de Staël was to reign there. The society was more varied in nationality than in the days when a brilliant but small band of intellects had gathered round to console her in her exile. Brougham, Bell, Lady Hamilton, Lord Breadalbane, Romilly, Stendahl, Schlegel, passed in rapid succession over the scene—talked, sparkled—and disappeared. They flashed like meteors, but Madame de Staël shone among them with a steady splendor. Wherever and with whomsoever she was, her powers remained always unquenchable. Nevertheless a great sadness possessed her. This was partly due to her anxiety concerning Rocca—partly to the disappointment inevitable in a spirit which broke impatiently against the limitations of life, the pettiness of human nature. “Ah happiness!” she exclaimed yearningly. Then added, “But at my age no trust is possible but in the goodness of God.”
Bonstetten, parting with her, was struck with the profound melancholy of the glance which she gave him. He had been gay and content, as usual, yet the memory of her look dwelt with him; and unable to explain it, he at last, the dear, genial old man, arrived at the touching conclusion that she had been thinking how old he was, and that she would never see him again. The adieu was, indeed, a lasting one; but it was over Madame de Staël’s radiant path that the shadows of death were to gather first.
Nevertheless, during the winter of 1816-17, and when she returned to Paris, her spirit showed no sign of failing. In her salon gathered Châteaubriand, Talleyrand, Wellington, Humboldt, Blucher, Lafayette, Schlegel and his brother, Canova, and crowds of English. Bonstetten averred that to her influence over Wellington alone was due the fact that the Army of Occupation was about this time diminished by 30,000 men.
Just before her death she removed from the Rue Royale to the Rue Neuve des Mathurins; and it was here that Châteaubriand again, after so many years, saw Madame Récamier, and commenced the romantic friendship which was to end only with his death. He had been invited to dine at Madame de Staël’s; but, when he arrived there, found that she was too ill to entertain the guests. The dinner took place all the same—for Madame de Staël invariably insisted on this, and made her daughter do the honors. They must have been melancholy banquets; the little Duchess de Broglie presiding with a heavy heart, and all the guests being vividly conscious of the noble life slowly and painfully ebbing away in another room. It is with a certain relief, therefore, in the midst of so much sadness that one reads Châteaubriand’s record of his meeting with Juliette. He was selfish and self-conscious and weak no doubt—his fretful uneasy vanity, indeed, pierces through the affected melancholy of the Mémoires d’Outre Tombe. They are sickly with a kind of faded perfume; and yet in the great void which is coming, one is glad to think that the blind Madame Récamier, the aged and feeble Châteaubriand, must often have remembered, perchance often talked of, that dinner where they met in the house of their dying friend.