In one of these letters she went so far in her inconsiderate enthusiasm as to say, that it was a great error in human institutions that the gentle and quiet Josephine had united her faith with his; that she, Madame de Staël, and Bonaparte, were born for each other, and that Nature seemed to have created a soul of fire like hers, in order that it might worship a hero such as he was.
Bonaparte crushed the letter in his hands, and exclaimed, as he threw it in the fire: "That a blue-stocking, a manufactress of sentiment, should dare to compare herself to Josephine! I shall not answer these letters!"
He did not answer them, but Madame de Staël did not, or rather would not, understand his silence. Little disposed to give up a resolution once formed, and to see her plans miscarry, Madame de Staël was now also determined to have her way, and to approach Bonaparte despite his resistance.
And she did have her way; she succeeded in overcoming all obstacles, and the interview, so long wished for by her, and so long avoided by him, at last took place. Madame de Staël was introduced at the Tuileries, and received by Bonaparte and his wife. The personal appearance of this intellectual woman was, however, but little calculated to overcome Bonaparte's prejudice. The costume of Madame de Staël was on this occasion, as it always was, fantastic, and utterly devoid of taste, and Napoleon loved to see women simply but elegantly and tastefully attired. In this interview with Napoleon, Madame de Staël gave free scope to her wit; but instead of dazzling him, as she had hoped to do, she only succeeded in depressing him.
It was while in this frame of mind, and when Madame de Staël, in her ardor, had endeavored almost to force him to pay her a compliment, that Napoleon responded to her at least somewhat indiscreet question: "Who is in your eyes the greatest woman?" with the sarcastic reply, "She who bears the most children to the state."
Madame de Staël had come with a heart full of enthusiasm; in her address to Napoleon, she had called him a "god descended to earth;" she had come an enthusiastic poetess; she departed an offended woman. Her wounded vanity never forgave the answer which seemed to make her ridiculous. She avenged herself, in her drawing-room, by the biting bon mots which she hurled at Napoleon and his family, and which were of course faithfully repeated to the first consul.
But the weapons which this intellectual woman now wielded against the hero who had scorned her, wounded him more severely than weapons of steel or iron. In the use of these weapons, Madame de Staël was his superior, and the consciousness of this embittered Bonaparte all the more against the lady, who dared prick the heel of Achilles with the needle of her wit, and strike at the very point where he was most sensitive.
A long and severe conflict now began between these two greatest geniuses of that period, a struggle that was carried on by both with equal bitterness. But Napoleon had outward power on his side, and could punish the enmity of his witty opponent, as a ruler.
He banished Madame de Staël from Paris, and soon afterward even from France. She who in Paris had been so ready to sing the praises of her "god descended from heaven," now went into exile his enemy and a royalist, to engage, with all her eloquence and genius, in making proselytes for the exiled Bourbons, and to raise in the minds of men an invisible but none the less formidable army against her enemy the great Napoleon.
Madame de Staël soon gave still greater weight to the flaming eruptions of her hatred of Napoleon, by her own increasing renown and greatness; and the poetess of Corinne and Delphine soon became as redoubtable an opponent of Napoleon as England, Russia, or Austria, could be.