In 1810, M. de Rocca, a French officer, who was yet suffering from dangerous wounds, received in Spain, arrived at Geneva. His personal condition and his reputation for brilliant courage heightened the interest excited by his youth and noble physiognomy. He first saw Madame de Stael at a public assembly. She entered the ball-room, dressed in a 114 costly but unbecoming style, and followed by a train of admirers. “Is this the far-famed woman?” said Rocca; “she is very ugly, and I detest such straining for effect.” A few words of sympathy, set off by the music of her voice, effected a complete revolution in his feelings. Wishes and hopes apparently the most extravagant took possession of his heart—for she was now a widow. “I will love her so much that she will marry me,” said he, and his words were soon fulfilled; but the event was carefully concealed until the death of Madame de Stael; for she was peculiarly sensitive to public opinion, and refused to acknowledge a marriage which might have excited ridicule—so great was the disparity of age and of condition between the parties. She was unwilling likewise to change her name. “Mon nom est a l’Europe,” said she to M. Rocca, when, on a subsequent occasion, he jestingly asked her to marry him.
For this marriage, as well as for her former one, Madame de Stael has been severely censured. Many apologies, if any be really necessary, may be found for her. Since the death of her father, she had felt, more than before, the want of an essential accessory to her happiness. Speaking of the asylum which she hoped to find in England, she said, “I feel the want of love, of cherishing, of some one to lean upon; if I can find in that country a man possessing real nobleness of character, I will gladly yield up my liberty.” Heartbroken and disappointed, both as a woman and an author, she had returned to Coppet, to find her residence there more irksome and unhappy than ever. She was advised not to go farther than ten leagues 115 from home; and fear lest she should involve her friends, induced her to forbid their coming to her. Her fears were not altogether without reason. Regardless of the advice she had received, she made the tour of Switzerland with M. de Montmorency, and the consequence to him was exile from France. Another friend, the beautiful and celebrated Madame de Recamier, paid for a few hours’ intercourse by exile to Lyons.
Imagination conjured up new terrors. The fear of imprisonment seized her, and she resolved to escape. The choice of a route perplexed her. She passed her life, she says, in studying the map of Europe, to find how she could escape beyond the wide-spread poison-tree of Napoleon’s power. She at length departed. England was the point of destination.
Passing through Germany, she was received at St. Petersburg with great distinction by the emperor, and, thence passing on her way, spent eight months at Stockholm with her old friend Bernadotte, crown prince of Sweden; with whom at Paris, in the early days of Bonaparte’s career, she had been discovered concerting measures to stop his progress towards absolute power—a discovery which furnished an apology for the treatment she received.
The “Ten Years of Exile,” which, after an intermission of several years, had been resumed, closes at Stockholm. In England, she met with a most cordial reception. Fashionable society courted her as a lion; the more intelligent and highly educated sought her for her genius.
Her work on Germany was published in London, and 116 raised her reputation as a critic to the highest point. She was among the founders of the philosophical school of critics; who, not wasting their attention on the conventional forms of composition, look to the intrinsic qualities which constitute literary excellence. But she was not sufficiently dispassionate always to form a correct judgment. Her enthusiasm and susceptibility made her too indulgent. As she would often be thrown into ecstasies by a wretched hand-organ in the street, so she would be in raptures with verses, the melody of which pleased her ear. She would repeat them with great pomp and emphasis, and say, “That is what I call poetry! it is delicious! and all the more that it does not convey a single idea to me.”
“Germany” was a gift of the greatest price to France. Her standards in literature had been fixed a century before, and to alter or advance them was deemed a work of impiety. A natural result was a want of vigor and of originality. She had imposed her fetters, too, on foreign nations. The cold, artificial spirit of the age of Louis XIV. long pressed, like an incubus, upon the literary spirit of Germany. But about the middle of the last century, the spell was broken. A literary revolution took place in that country, and, from being destitute of all national literature, Germany became possessed of one the most characteristic. To furnish a literary and mental portraiture of this emancipated nation, was a work requiring a rare combination of talents, and one which was executed by Madame de Stael with singular ability.
She hailed with delight the overthrow of Napoleon, 117 which opened to her the way to Paris. But she never joined in the senseless cry which was raised, that he had neither talents nor courage. “It would be too humiliating for France, and for all Europe,” she said, “that, for fifteen years, it had been beaten and outwitted by a coward and a blockhead.” Her joy was, however, tempered by grief and indignation, that the soil of France, “cette belle France,” should be desecrated by the feet of foreign invaders. To avoid witnessing the humiliating spectacle of Paris in the possession of barbarians, she retired to Coppet, where, in 1816, she renewed her acquaintance with Lord Byron, whose genius fascinated her, and who had been chief favorite while she was in England. She now gave him much advice as to his conduct, which he met by quoting the motto to “Delphine,”—“Man must learn to brave opinion,—woman to submit to it.” But she no longer defended the truth of this epigraph. Always religious, the principles of Christianity now mingled more intimately in her sentiments.
Time, too, had wrought a change in her character: she was much softened, and appreciated more justly the real blessings and misfortunes of life. In her own family she found sources of happiness. Her children were dutiful and affectionate, and the marriage of her daughter to the Duke de Broglie gave her pleasure. Her chief cause of disquietude was the ill health of her husband, in anticipation of whose death she composed a book, with the title, “The only Misfortune of Life, the Loss of a Person beloved.” But she was not destined to be the sufferer now. She had ever despised the accommodation of the body, and gave herself no trouble about 118 health. She affected to triumph over infirmity, and was wont to say, “I might have been sickly, like any body else, had I not resolved to vanquish physical weakness.” But nature was not to be thus defied. Her health failed, and the use of opium aided the progress of disease. But sickness threw no cloud over her intellect; “I am now,” she said, “what I have ever been—sad, yet vivacious;” but it displayed the moral beauties of her character in a more striking light. She was kind, patient, and devout. Her sleepless nights were spent in prayer. Existence no longer appeared to her in its gayest colors. “Life,” she said, “resembles Gobelin tapestry; you do not see the canvass on the right side; but when you turn it, the threads are visible. The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes. I never committed an error that was not the cause of a disaster.” Yet she left life with regret, though death possessed for her no terrors. “I shall meet my father on the other side,” she said, “and my daughter will ere long rejoin me.” “I think,” said she, one day, as if waking from a dream, “I think I know what the passage from life to death is; and I am convinced that the goodness of God makes it easy; our thoughts become confused, and the pain is not great.” She died with the utmost composure, at Paris, July, 1817.
Her husband survived her but a few months. “Grief put a period to his already precarious existence. He withdrew from Paris, to die beneath the beautiful sky of Provence, and there breathed his last sighs in the arms of his brother.”