She was, with all her vivacity, naturally melancholy. The society of nature, as she termed it, nursed her darkest reveries, and she turned from her own thoughts as from a spring of bitterness. As existence became stagnant, ennui generated a thousand imaginary monsters of mind; she felt lost and miserable. Death and solitude were, in her mind, closely allied. Take away the animation of conversation; the intercommunication of ideas among the many; the struggle, the applause, the stirring interest in events; the busy crowd that gave variety to every impression; and the rest of life was, in her eyes, a fearful vigil near the grave. It is beautifully said, that God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. Sometimes, however, the exact contrary has place, and our weak and sore points are sought out to be roughly handled. Thus madame de Staël, brought up to act a foremost part on the brilliant theatre of the civilised world, was cast back on herself, and found there only discontent and misery. To us sober English, indeed, her life at Coppet seems busy enough. She assembled all travellers about her; her domestic circle was large; she acted plays; she declaimed; but it would not do: Paris was interdicted, and she was cut off from happiness.
1810.
Ætat.
44.
Having finished her "Germany," she desired to overlook its progress through the press at the permitted distance of forty leagues from Paris. She established herself near Blois, in the old château of Chammont-sur-Loire, erst inhabited by cardinal d'Amboise, Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medicis, and Nostradamus. A few friends gathering round her, she enjoyed the amusements and occupations she shared with them. Madame Recamier was chief among them, and very dear to her. Her plan was, as soon as her book was printed, to reach England by America, that being the only path left open to our island by Napoleon. She had submitted her work to the censor, and, having made all the alterations exacted, she felt herself safe. But the storm gathered, and broke unexpectedly. She had not praised Napoleon; she had not mentioned the success of the French armies in Germany; she had tried even to enlarge the sphere of French literature, by introducing a knowledge of and taste for the German—an attempt anti-national in the emperor's eyes. He did not hesitate to condemn such a work. The duke de Rovigo, minister of police, sent to seize on the edition, to demand the manuscript, and to order her to quit France in three days. She was proud of her book, and had every right to be so; and she gladly anticipated the applause and increased reputation that would follow it. The loss of this could be borne, but the renewed sentence of exile struck her to the heart. She was forced to obey. Her first idea was to embark for America; but her purpose in so doing was to get on board an English ship, and reach England. Her plans were disturbed by an intimation from Savary that she must embark only at the ports of France furthest from her desired goal. The minister wrote to her with flippancy, that her book was not French, and that her exile was the consequence of the course she had followed for years. The air of France evidently disagreed with her; but the French were not reduced to seek for models in the countries which she admired. Savary was still more frank when speaking on the subject. He asked why she had made no mention of the emperor or his armies? He was told that such allusions were out of place in a book that treated solely of literature. "Do you think," he replied, "that we have carried on a war in Germany for eighteen years for so well-known an author to omit all mention of us? The book shall be destroyed, and we should do well to send the writer to Vincennes."
Her plans disturbed, hope dead within her, she returned to Coppet, almost resigned to pass her life in the château; but the hour had passed away when she was allowed to enjoy the tribute of visits from foreigners of distinction, and to gather round her such friends as she best loved. A series of the most tormenting and cruel persecutions were instituted, that acting on an imagination easily disquieted, and on a temperament that needed the atmosphere of joy to feel at ease, drove her into a state of intense and uninterrupted suffering. She gave up all idea, which must always be agreeable to an author, of publishing; she scarcely dared write. All her acquaintance as well as friends were looked on with unfavourable eyes. She could not venture to ask a guest to dinner; she was so afraid of compromising the whole family of any one who came near her. The prefect of Geneva was changed as being too favourably disposed. The new magistrate urged her to eulogise Napoleon as the sure means of putting an end to all her annoyances: would she only celebrate the birth of the king of Rome? She replied that she did not know how to do so: she could only express her hopes that he would have a good nurse. The prefect took his leave, and never came near her again. Her children were forbidden to enter France. She went to Aix, in Savoy, for the benefit of the health of her youngest son; she was ordered to return; she was advised never to go further than two leagues from Coppet. William Schlegel, whom she had engaged to live with her to assist in the education of her children, was ordered to quit her château. He had published a work, in which he showed a preference to the Phædra of Euripides over that of Racine; he was judged anti-Gallican; and she was told that his society was injurious to her. A thousand terrors seized her. Confined within narrow precincts, deprived of her friends, she began to fear a prison, where she would have been left to perish, miserable and forgotten. She resolved to escape—it was difficult to choose a route. She was told that she would be arrested on her way through any country under the dominion of the French. She passed her life, she says, in studying a map of Europe, to find how she could escape beyond the wide-spread poison tree of Napoleon's power. She traced a route through the Tyrol on her way to Russia and Sweden, and thence to England. A thousand difficulties presented themselves for the execution of this plan, but it was her best.
"There is physical pleasure," she writes, "in resisting unjust power;" the act of resistance was animating, but when the hour of defeat came all was stagnant, fearful, and oppressive. The worst blow dealt her was when she found that any friend who visited her was involved in the same oppression. An old friend, M. de Montmorency, visited Coppet; the delight of seeing him made her blind to danger. She made a tour through Switzerland with him in spite of the advice given her not to go further than two leagues from Coppet. They afterwards returned to her château, where M. de Montmorency speedily received an order of exile. This news plunged her in agony—that her friends should be wounded through her was worse than her own misfortunes. While still suffering from this disaster, she received a letter from madame Recamier, saying that she was on her road to Aix, in Savoy, and announcing her intention of visiting Coppet in her way. Madame de Staël implored her not to come; but her generous friend could not pass so near without spending a few hours with her;—a few hours only, but they sufficed to call down banishment on her head: henceforth she was driven from her home and friends, and forced to take up her residence at Lyons in solitude and exile. All this was done to drive her to dishonour herself by praising him whose tyranny made him every day more odious, as the persecutor of herself and the oppressor of France. The prefect of Geneva was ordered to annul her, and he took pains to impress every one with the dangers that would accrue from any intercourse with her. He waylaid every stranger, and turned them aside from the path to her house; her correspondents in Paris were exiled; she felt that she ought to refrain from seeing any one. By a natural struggle of feeling she was disquieted when her friends generously sought, and still more miserable when they selfishly abandoned her.
She never saw the day return, she says, that she did not repine at being obliged to live to its end. She was married again at this time. This event, which was kept secret till after her death, is one of the most singular of her history.
In the year 1810 there came to Geneva a young Spaniard of the name of Rocca. He was an officer in the French army, and had been wounded dangerously in Spain. He inspired great interest through the reputation he enjoyed for brilliant courage and for talent. He was young and very handsome; but his wounds had reduced him to a state of great weakness and suffering; and the contrast was striking and interesting between his youth and noble physiognomy, and his extreme pallor and attenuated figure. He heard madame de Staël talk, and was seized with enthusiastic admiration. Necker said of his daughter that her conversation imparted an idea of the beautiful; and thus, though twenty years older than himself, and, except for her eyes, with no beauty of face, the young Rocca was attracted by that of her mind, and said, "I shall love her so much that at last she will marry me." These words were soon fulfilled. But she refused to acknowledge a marriage which, from disparity of age, might have excited ridicule; and in all things of that sort madame de Staël was singularly timid. She was averse also to change her name. "Mon nom est à l'Europe," she replied to Rocca, when they were in England, and he jestingly asked her to marry him. She does not in her narratives advert to this marriage; but the fear must have haunted her that Napoleon would exile Rocca from Coppet; while, on the other hand, she found it difficult to leave an infant child, the offspring of their union, uncertain when again she could rejoin it.
These terrors and doubts threw her into a nervous state of the most painful kind. Now, she thought it wrong and foolish to leave her house, where she enjoyed every bodily comfort and the society of her children,—again, the fear of prison, the terror of who next among her friends would be the tyrant's victim, distracted her. At length she resolved to depart, and ultimately to reach England; whether by Russia and Sweden, or Greece and Constantinople, was to be decided by circumstances that might occur during her progress.
Her account of her journey is full of interest. An abridgment can give little idea of its difficulties,—the petty yet stinging annoyances by which she was beset,—the delays, the terror, the disappointments. Now she feared for her daughter's health,—and then still more for the safety of M. Rocca. The order for his arrest as a French officer had been forwarded through Germany. It is true he had sent in his resignation, his wounds preventing him from active service; but, if he had been taken, there is no doubt that he would have been treated with the utmost rigour. They were often obliged to separate, and he rejoined her once or twice in moments full of peril to himself. She traversed Germany and Poland in this way; and even in Russia she was not sure of escape from Napoleon. His armies had entered that vast empire, and were close behind her.
It was matter of joy to her when at last, after passing through Moscow, she arrived at St. Petersburg, to find the emperor Alexander full of resolution and ardour to resist the despot. He treated her with great distinction; and she proceeded on her way to her old friend Bernadotte, at that time crown prince of Sweden. She remained eight months at Stockholm. She had begun a portion of her "Dix Années d'Exil" at Coppet, it being copied as fast as written by her friends, feigned English names and old dates being substituted for the real; since under Napoleon's police regulations it was not safe to preserve a page of manuscript in which he was blamed.