Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, Vol. 2 of 2

by Madame de Rémusat

This event brought me into connection with him. His works pleased me, but his presence disturbed my liking for them. He was, and is still, much spoiled by society, particularly by women. He places his associates in a most embarrassing position at times, because one sees immediately that one has nothing to teach him as to his own value. He invariably takes the first place, and, making himself comfortable there, becomes extremely amiable. But his conversation, which displays a vivid imagination, exhibits also a certain hardness of heart, and a selfishness that is but ill concealed. His works are religious, and indicate none but the noblest sentiments. He is in earnest when he writes, but he lacks gravity in his bearing. His face is handsome, his form somewhat awry, and he is careful and even affected in his toilet. It would seem that he prefers in love that which is generally known as les bonnes fortunes. It is plain that he prefers to have disciples rather than friends. In fine, I conclude from all that I have seen that it is better to read him than to know him. Later on, I will narrate what took place in regard to the decennial prizes.

I have hardly seen Mme. de Staël, but I have been surrounded by persons who have known her well. My mother and some of my relatives were intimate with her in their youth, and have told me that in her earliest years she displayed a character which promised to carry her beyond the restraints of nearly all social customs. At the age of fifteen she enjoyed the most abstract reading and the most impassioned works. The famous Franclieu of Geneva, finding her one day with a volume of J. J. Rousseau in her hand, and surrounded by books of all kinds, said to her mother, Mme. Necker: “Take care; you will make your daughter a lunatic or a fool.” This severe judgment was not realized, and yet it is impossible not to feel that there was something very odd, something that looked like mental alienation, in the manner in which Mme. de Staël acted her part as a woman in the world. Surrounded in her father’s house by a circle consisting of all the men in the city who were in any way distinguished, excited by the conversations that she heard as well as by her own nature, her intellectual faculties were perhaps developed to excess. She then acquired the taste for controversy which she has since practiced so much, and in which she has shown herself so piquante and so distinguished. She was animated even to agitation, perfectly true and natural, felt with force, and expressed herself with fire. Harassed by an imagination which consumed her, too eager for notoriety and success, hampered by those laws of society which keep women within narrow bounds, she braved everything, conquered everything, and suffered much from this stormy contest between the demon that pushed her on and the social proprieties which could not restrain her.

She had the misfortune to be excessively plain, and to be miserable on that account; for it seemed as if she felt within herself a craving for successes of all kinds. With a passably pretty face, she would probably have been happier, because she would have been calmer. Her nature was too passionate for her not to love strongly, and her imagination too vivid for her not to think that she loved often. The celebrity she acquired naturally brought to her much homage, by which her vanity was gratified. Although she had great kindness of heart, she excited both hatred and envy; she startled women, and she wounded many men whose superior she thought herself. Some of her friends, however, were always faithful, and her own loyalty to friendship never failed.

When Bonaparte was made Consul, Mme. de Staël had already become famous through her opinions, her conduct, and her works. A personage like Bonaparte excited the curiosity, and at first even the enthusiasm, of a woman who was always awake to all that was remarkable. She became deeply interested in him—sought him, pursued him everywhere. She believed that the happy combination of so many distinguished qualities and of so many favorable circumstances might be turned to the profit of her idol, Liberty; but she quickly startled Bonaparte, who did not wish to be either watched or divined. Mme. de Staël, after making him uneasy, displeased him. He received her advances coldly, and disconcerted her by his bluntness and sharp words. He offended many of her opinions; a certain distrust grew up between them, and, as they were both high-tempered, this distrust was not long in changing to hatred.

When in Paris, Mme. de Staël received many people, and all political subjects were freely discussed under her roof. Louis Bonaparte, then very young, visited her sometimes and enjoyed her conversation. His brother became uneasy at this, and forbade his frequenting the house, and even went so far as to have him watched. Men of letters, publicists, men of the Revolution, great lords, were all to be met there.

“This woman,” said the First Consul, “teaches people to think who never thought before, or who had forgotten how to think.” And there was much truth in this. The publication of certain works by M. Necker put the finishing touch to his irritation: he banished Mme. de Staël from France, and did himself great harm by this act of arbitrary persecution. In addition to this, as nothing excites one like a first injustice, he even pursued those persons who believed it their duty to show her kindness in her exile. Her works, with the exception of her novels, were mutilated before their appearance in France; all the journals were ordered to speak ill of them; no generosity was shown her. When she was driven from her own land, foreign countries welcomed her warmly. Her talents fortified her against the annoyances of her life, and raised her to a height which many men might well have envied. If Mme. de Staël had known how to add to her goodness of heart and to her brilliant genius the advantages of a calm and quiet life, she would have avoided the greater part of her misfortunes, and seized while living the distinguished rank which will not long be refused her among the writers of her century. Her works indicate rapid and keen insight, and a warmth that comes from her soul. They are characterized by an imagination that is almost too vivid, but she lacks clearness and good taste. In reading her writings one sees at once that they are the results of an excitable nature, rebelling under order and regularity. Her life was not exactly that of a woman, nor could it be that of a man; it was utterly deficient in repose—a deprivation without remedy for happiness, and even for talent.

After the first restoration, Mme. de Staël returned to France, overwhelmed with joy at being once more in her own land, and at seeing the dawn of the constitutional régime for which she had so ardently longed. Bonaparte’s return struck terror to her soul. Again she resumed her wanderings, but her exile this time lasted only a hundred days. She reappeared with the King. She was very happy. She had married her daughter to the Duc de Broglie, who unites to the distinction of his name a noble and elevated nature; the liberation of France satisfied her, her friends were near her, and the world crowded about her. This was the time when death claimed her, at the age of fifty. The last work on which she was engaged, and which she had not completed, was published after her death; this has made her thoroughly known to us. This work not only paints the times in which she lived, but gives a clear and exact idea of the century which gave her birth—which alone could have developed her, and of which she is not one of the least results.

I occasionally heard Bonaparte speak of Mme. de Staël. The hatred he bore her was unquestionably founded in some degree upon that jealousy with which he was inspired by any superiority which he could not control; and his words were often characterized by a bitterness which elevated her in spite of himself, and lowered him in the estimation of those who, in the full possession of their reasoning faculties, listened to him.

While Mme. de Staël could complain with so much justice of the persecution to which she was subjected, there was another woman, much her inferior and far less celebrated, who had had reason to rejoice in the protection accorded to her by the Emperor. This was Mme. de Genlis. He never found in her either talents or opinions in opposition to his own. She had loved and glorified the Revolution, and well understood how to profit by all its liberties. In her old age she became both a prude and a dévote. She attached herself to order and discipline, and for this reason, or under this pretext manifested a profound admiration for Bonaparte by which he was much flattered; he bestowed a pension upon her, and instituted a sort of correspondence with her, in the course of which she kept him informed of all that she felt would be useful to him, and taught him much regarding the ancient régime which he wished to know. She loved and protected M. Fiévée, then a very young writer; she drew him into this correspondence, and it was in this way that between himself and Bonaparte were established those relations of which Fiévée subsequently boasted so much. Although flattered by the admiration of Mme. de Genlis, Bonaparte understood her thoroughly. He once expressed himself openly in my presence in regard to her. He was speaking of that prudery which permeates all her works. “When Mme. de Genlis,” he said, “wishes to define virtue, she speaks of it as of a discovery!”

The Restoration did not reëstablish relations between Mme. de Genlis and the house of Orleans. The Duke of Orleans did not choose to see her more than once, but contented himself with continuing the pension allowed her by the Emperor.