M. de Talleyrand, to whose conduct the Emperor frequently alluded, for the purpose of discovering, he said, when he had really begun to betray him, had strongly urged him to make peace, on his return from Leipsic. “I must,” he observed, “do him that justice. He found fault with my speech to the Senate, but warmly approved of that which I made to the Legislative Body. He uniformly maintained, that I deceived myself with respect to the energy of the nation; that it would not second mine, and that it was requisite for me to arrange my affairs by every possible sacrifice. It appears that he was then sincere. I never, from my own experience, found Talleyrand eloquent or persuasive. He dwelt a great deal, and a long time, on the same idea. Perhaps also, as our acquaintance was of old date, he behaved in a peculiar manner to me. He was, however, so skilful in his evasions and ramblings that, after conversations which lasted several hours, he has gone away, frequently avoiding the explanations and objects I expected to obtain from him on his coming.”
With regard to the affairs of the moment and to the contents of the last journals which described France in a constantly increasing agitation, the result was that the chances of the future seemed indefinite, multiplied, and inexhaustible for all Europe, and that there existed, at that instant, an incontrovertible fact, communicated to us from all quarters, that nobody in Europe considered himself in a permanent situation. Every one seemed to apprehend or to foresee new events.
The Emperor kept me to breakfast with him in the tent. He afterwards sent for Madame de Staël’s Corinne, and read some chapters of it. He said that he could not get through it. Madame de Staël had drawn so complete a likeness of herself in her heroine, that she had succeeded in convincing him that it was herself. “I see her,” said he, “I hear her, I feel her, I wish to avoid her, and I throw away the book. I had a better impression of this work on my memory, than what I feel at present. Perhaps it is because, at the time, I read it with my thumb, as M. l’Abbé de Pradt ingeniously says, and not without some truth. I shall, however, persevere; I am determined to see the end of it; I still think that it was not destitute of some interest. Yet I cannot forgive Madame de Staël for having undervalued the French in her romance. The family of Madame de Staël is unquestionably a very singular one—her father, her mother and herself, all three on their knees, in constant adoration of each other, regaling one another with reciprocal incense, for the better edification and mystification of the public. Madame de Staël may, nevertheless, exult in surpassing her noble parents, when she presumed to write, that her sentiments for her father were such that she detected herself in being jealous of her mother.
“Madame de Staël,” he continued, “was ardent in her passions, vehement and extravagant in her expressions. This is what was discovered by the police, while she was under its superintendence. ‘I am far from you;’ (she was probably writing to her husband,) ‘come instantly;—I command;—I insist upon it; I am on my knees; I beseech you, come.—My hand grasps a dagger. If you hesitate, I shall kill myself; and you alone will be guilty of my destruction’[destruction’]” This was Corinne.
She had, said the Emperor, combined all her efforts and all her means to make an impression on the General of the army of Italy; without any knowledge of him, she wrote to him, when far off; she tormented him when present. If she was to be believed, the union of genius with a little insignificant Creole, incapable of appreciating or comprehending him, was a monstrosity. Unfortunately the General’s only answer was an indifference which women never forgive, and which, indeed, he remarked with a smile, is hardly to be forgiven.
On his arrival at Paris, he was followed with the same eagerness, but he maintained, on his part, the same reserve, the same silence. Madame de Staël resolved, however, to extract some words from him and to struggle with the conqueror of Italy, attacked him face to face, at the grand entertainment given by M. de Talleyrand, Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the victorious General. She challenged him in the middle of a numerous circle, to tell her who was the greatest woman in the world, whether dead or living. “She, who has had most children,” answered Napoleon, with great simplicity. Madame de Staël was, at first, a little disconcerted, and endeavoured to recover herself by observing that it was reported that he was not very fond of women. “Pardon me, Madam,” again replied Napoleon, “I am very fond of my wife.”
The General of the army of Italy, said the Emperor, might, no doubt, have excited the enthusiasm of the Genevese Corinna to its highest pitch; but he dreaded her politic perfidy and her thirst of celebrity; he was, perhaps, in the wrong. The heroine had, however, been too eager in her pursuit and too often discouraged, not to become a violent enemy. “She instigated the person, who was then a under her influence, and he,” observed the Emperor, “did not enter upon the business in a very honourable manner. On the appointment of the Tribunate, he employed the most pressing solicitations with the First Consul to be nominated a member. At eleven o’clock at night, he was supplicating with all his might; but at twelve, when the favour was granted, he was already erect and almost in an insulting attitude. The first meeting of the Tribunes was a splendid occasion for his invectives against me. At night, Madame de Staël’s hotel was illuminated. She crowned her Benjamin amidst a brilliant assembly, and proclaimed him a second Mirabeau. This farce, which was ridiculous enough, was followed by more dangerous plans. At the time of the Concordat, against which Madame de Staël was quite furious, she united at once against me the aristocrats and the republicans. ‘You have,’ she exclaimed, ‘but[‘but] a single moment left; to-morrow the tyrant will have forty thousand priests at his disposal.’”
“Madame de Staël,” said Napoleon, “having at length tired out my patience, was sent into exile. Her father had seriously offended me before, at the time of the campaign of Marengo. I wished to see him on my way, and he struck me merely as a dull bloated college tutor. Shortly afterwards, and with the hope, no doubt, of again appearing, by my help, in public life, he published a pamphlet[pamphlet], in which he proved that France could neither be a republic nor a monarchy. What it might be,” remarked the Emperor, “was not sufficiently evident. In that work, he called the First Consul, the necessary man, &c. Lebrun replied to him, in a letter of four pages, in his admirable style, and with all his powers of sarcasm; he asked him whether he had not done sufficient mischief to France, and whether his pretensions to govern her again were not exhausted by his experiment of the Constituent Assembly.
“Madame de Staël, in her disgrace, carried on hostilities with the one hand, and supplicated with the other. She was informed, on the part of the First Consul, that he left her the universe for the theatre of her achievements; that he resigned the rest of the world to her, and only reserved Paris for himself, which he forbade her to approach. But Paris was precisely the object of Madame de Staël’s wishes. No matter; the Consul was inflexible. Madame de Staël, however, occasionally renewed her attempts. Under the empire, she wished to be a lady of the palace. Yes or no might certainly be pronounced; but by what means could Madame de Staël be kept quiet in a palace?” &c.
After dinner, the Emperor read the Horatii, and was frequently interrupted by our bursts of admiration. Never did Corneille appear to us grander, more noble, more nervous, than on our rock.