There is nothing in Madame de Staël's printed works which approaches this naturalness, this eloquence, in which imagination lends its expression to the feelings. The virtue of Madame Récamier's friendship must have been great, since it was able to make a woman of genius produce what was hidden and, as yet, unrevealed in her talent. We divine, moreover, in the sad accent of Madame de Staël a secret displeasure, of which the beauty would naturally be the confidant, she who could never receive like wounds.
*
Madame de Staël, having returned to France, came, in the spring of 1810[385], to live at the Château de Chaumont[386], on the banks of the Loire, at forty leagues from Paris, the distance fixed by the radius of her banishment. Madame Récamier joined her at that country-house.
Madame de Staël was at that time supervising the impression of her work on Germany; when it was on the point of publication, she sent it to Bonaparte with this letter:
Madame de Staël to Napoleon.
"Sire,
"I take the liberty of presenting to Your Majesty my work on Germany. If you deign to read it, it seems to me that you will find in it proof of a mind capable of some reflection and ripened by time. Sire, it is twelve years since I saw Your Majesty and since I was exiled. Twelve years of misfortune modify all characters, and destiny teaches resignation to those who suffer. Prepared to put to sea, I beseech Your Majesty to grant me half-an-hour's conversation. I believe that I have things to tell you which may interest you, and it is on that score that I beseech you to grant me the favour of speaking to you before my departure. I will allow myself only one thing in this letter, which is an explanation of the motives which oblige me to leave the Continent, if I do not obtain permission from Your Majesty to live at a country-place near enough to Paris for my children to stay there. Your Majesty's disgrace casts so great a disfavour in Europe upon the persons who are its object, that I cannot take a step without encountering its effects. Some fear to compromise themselves by seeing me, others think themselves Romans when triumphing over that fear. The simplest social relations become services which a proud mind cannot put up with. Among my friends are some who have allied themselves to my lot with admirable generosity; but I have seen the most intimate sentiments shattered against the necessity to live with me in solitude, and I have spent my life during the past eight years between the dread of not obtaining sacrifices and the sorrow of being the object of them. It is perhaps ridiculous thus to enter into details of one's impressions with the sovereign of the world; but that which gave you the world, Sire, is a sovereign genius. And, in respect of observation of the human heart, Your Majesty's comprehension embraces the greatest and the most delicate springs. My sons have no career, my daughter is thirteen years of age; in a few years it will be necessary to settle her: it would be selfish to compel her to live in the insipid residences to which I am condemned. I shall therefore have to part from her, alas! This life is unendurable, and I know no remedy for it on the Continent. What city can I choose in which Your Majesty's disgrace does not place an invincible obstacle to both the settling of my children and my personal repose? Your Majesty is not yourself, perhaps, aware of the fear which most of the authorities of every country entertain of exiles, and in this connection I should have things to tell you which surely exceed what you may have ordered. Your Majesty has been told that I regretted Paris because of the Museum and Talma: this is an agreeable jest upon exile, in other words upon the misfortune which Cicero and Bolingbroke have declared to be the most insupportable of all; but, if I were to love the master-pieces of art which France owes to Your Majesty's conquests, if I were to love those beautiful tragedies, the images of heroism: would it be for you, Sire, to blame me for it? Is not the happiness of each individual compounded of the nature of his faculties? And, if Heaven has given me talents, have I not the imagination which renders the enjoyment of the arts and the mind necessary? So many people ask of Your Majesty real advantages of every kind! Why should I blush to ask of you friendship, poetry, music, pictures, all that ideal existence which I can enjoy without swerving from the submission which I owe to the Monarch of France?"
This unpublished letter was worth preserving[387]. Madame de Staël was not, as has been contended, a blind and implacable enemy. She was listened to no more than I, when I also saw myself obliged to write to Bonaparte to ask him for the life of my cousin Armand. Alexander and Cæsar would have been touched by this letter so lofty in tone, written by so famous a woman; but the confidence of the merit which judges itself the equal of the supreme dominion, that sort of familiarity of the intellect which places itself on the level of the master of Europe to treat with him as from crown to crown appeared to Bonaparte but the arrogance of a disordered self-esteem. He thought himself set at defiance by all that had any independent greatness; to him baseness seemed fidelity, pride revolt: he did not know that true talent recognises no Napoleons save in genius, that it has its right of entry into the palaces as into the temples, because it is immortal.
*
Madame de Staël left Chaumont and returned to Coppet[388]; Madame Récamier again hastened to go to her; M. Mathieu de Montmorency also remained devoted to her. Both were punished for it; they were smitten with the very penalty which they had gone to console: the forty leagues' distance from Paris was inflicted on them[389].
Madame Récamier retired to Châlons-sur-Marne[390] influenced in her selection by its propinquity to Montmirail[391], where Messieurs de La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville resided.