MADAME DE STAËL MEETS NAPOLEON.
The hostility between Madame de Staël and Napoleon was inevitable,
since not a single point of sympathy existed between them. Her moral
superiority, unselfishness, romantic ardor and sincerity, were precisely
the qualities for which he would feel contempt, as being incompatible
with the singleness of individual purpose, serene indifference to
suffering, and calm acceptance of means which are necessary to material
success. Madame de Staël was intimately convinced that not only honesty,
but every other virtue constituted the best policy. Napoleon treated all
such amiable theories as mere sentimentalism. If occasionally sensual
from love of excitement, he was essentially passionless, and looked
upon women as toys, not as sentient beings. He hated them to have ideas
of their own; he liked them to be elegant, graceful and pretty. He was
brought into contact with Madame de Staël—a woman overflowing with
passion, energy and intellect, large of person, loud of voice, careless
in attire. She had generally found her eloquence invincible, and he meant
nothing to be invincible but his system. She had every reason to believe
in her talent, and proclaimed that belief somewhat obstreperously; while
he was disgusted at not being able to differ from her, and at finding
that there was still one light which could shine unquenched beside his
star. He usually succeeded in repressing people so entirely as to leave
alive in them no possibility of protest; but she was, by her nature,
irrepressible. It is true that she records having felt suffocated in
his presence, but such a feeling could not have endured in her long.
A very little familiarity would have transformed it into impatient
rebellion. For Napoleon society, with a few exceptions, was composed of
dummies, some of them a little more tangible and resisting than others,
consequently more difficult to thrust out of the way. The individual
had no intrinsic value for him, but was simply a factor in the sum
of success. Madame de Staël admired everybody who was clever, loved
everybody who was good, pitied everybody who was sorrowful. She detested
oppression, and fought against it and conquered, if not materially, at
least morally, although sometimes she hardly foresaw when engaging in it
how much the fight would cost her. In the beginning of her acquaintance
with him Madame de Staël evidently entertained an admiration for
Napoleon greater than that which she eventually cared to avow. Bourrienne
goes so far as to assert that she was in love with him, and that she
wrote him perfervid letters, which he disdainfully threw into the fire.
It is not necessary to accept the whole of this story. Bourrienne as
a returned _émigré_ can have felt but a meagre sympathy for Madame de
Staël, and he probably yielded to the temptation of making his account
of her as piquant as possible. But as she never did anything by halves,
and always wrote with the most unconventional ardor, it is certain that
her first sentiments towards the conqueror of Italy were expressed in a
form to weary rather than gratify him. She presumably praised him for
views which he did not hold, and for a disinterestedness that he was far
from feeling. He must have understood that to an intellect such as hers,
the first shock of disappointment would bring enlightenment, and then
his schemes would be penetrated before they were ripe for execution. Add
to all these elements of antipathy the fact that every intelligent man
in Paris would find his way to Madame de Staël’s salon, with the further
fact that she herself was not to be silenced, and it becomes easy to
understand how Bonaparte could condescend from his greatness to hate her.
His aversion, owing to his Italian blood, had a strain of Pulcinello-like
malignity, and every fresh outbreak of clamor from his victim only roused
him to strike harder. That he should exile her in the first instance was
not only comprehensible but justifiable. He had undertaken a gigantic
task, that of accomplishing by the single force of his own will, and in
the brief space of his own life-time, what, in the natural course of
events, would have required the slow action of generations. That is, he
sought to weld into his own system the mobile, alert, and impressionable
mind of France.
To crush a thing so impalpable, to extinguish a thing so fiery, was an
impossible undertaking, and to anybody but Napoleon it must have seemed
so. He, at least, so far understood its magnitude as to appreciate the
full danger of even a momentary reaction. And what, in that sombre but
electric atmosphere, charged with suppressed fire, was so likely to
provoke a reaction as the influence of Madame de Staël—a woman of amazing
talent, of high position and great wealth; notoriously disinterested,
and, although ever true to her principles, yet strongly swayed by
personal influences.
Moreover, she represented the Opposition. Let anybody consider what
public opinion is, even in well-ordered England, how it reverses in
a moment the best laid plans of Ministers, and it becomes easy to
understand how in revolutionary France, a new thought emanating from
Madame de Staël’s salon could prove gravely dangerous to Napoleon. In
exiling her he only treated her as she had been treated already. If he
found her in France on coming to power, it was because she had been
reconciled to the Directory; but there never was the least chance of her
becoming reconciled to him.
There are several very womanly touches in Madame de Staël’s own account
of her relations with Napoleon. Here is one of them, relating apparently
to a time when the aversion between the First Consul and his illustrious
foe had become an accomplished but not an acknowledged fact. Madame de
Staël was invited to General Berthier’s one evening when it was known
that Napoleon would be present.
“As I knew,” she says, “that he spoke very ill of me, it struck me that
he would address me with some of the rude things which he often liked
to say to women, even to those who flattered him; and I wrote down on
chance, before going to the party, the different stinging and spirited
replies which I could make to his speeches. I did not wish to be taken
by surprise if he insulted me, for that would have been a greater want
of character even than of wit; and as nobody could be sure of remaining
at ease with such a man, I had prepared myself beforehand to defy him.
Fortunately, it was unnecessary; he only put the most insignificant
question in the world to me, for … he never attacks except where he feels
himself to be the stronger.”
The whole of this passage is enchantingly simple-minded. One may be
allowed to think, in spite of Madame de Staël’s assertion to the
contrary, that she was really disappointed at not being able to make some
of her defiant retorts to the conqueror; but it was child-like of her to
have arranged them in advance!
Napoleon was preparing to invade Switzerland. Madame de Staël flattered
herself for a moment that she might deter him from the project, and
sought an interview with him for that purpose. The _tête-à-tête_ lasted
an hour, and Napoleon listened with the utmost patience, but he did not
give himself any trouble to discuss Madame de Staël’s arguments, and
quickly diverted the conversation to his own love of solitude, country
life and fine arts—three things for which, by the way, his visitor cared
almost as little as himself. She came away convinced that the eloquence
of Cicero and Demosthenes combined would not move him, but captivated,
she admits, by the charm of his manner; in other words, by the false
_bonhomie_ which he possessed the art of introducing into his Italian
garrulity. While Madame de Staël pleaded and Bonaparte chattered they
were both learning to understand one another, but it is most probable
that the first to be enlightened was the man.
Switzerland being threatened with an invasion, Madame de Staël left Paris
in 1798 to join her father at Coppet; for he was still on the list of
_émigrés_, and therefore came under a law which forbade him on pain of
death to remain on any soil occupied by French troops. His daughter,
always as much alarmed by remote danger as courageous when in imminent
peril, trembled for his safety, and supplicated him to leave, but in
vain. He probably supposed that her fears were groundless; and so they
turned out to be.
When Madame de Staël was returning to France, Necker, anxious to have
his name erased from the list of the proscribed, drew up a memorial to
that effect, which was presented by his daughter to the Government. His
request having been unanimously granted, his next step was to endeavor
to recover the two millions which he had quixotically left in the
public treasury when quitting France on the outbreak of the Revolution.
The Government recognized the debt, and offered to pay it out of the
confiscated church lands. But to this M. Necker would not consent. He no
longer disapproved of the sale of ecclesiastical property, but he did
not wish to throw doubt on his perfect impartiality by confounding his
interests with his opinions.
About this time Madame de Staël’s separation from her husband took place.
Her ostensible object was to ensure the safety of her children’s fortune,
which was jeopardized by Baron de Staël’s extravagance. Any other reason
which may have existed is not of great importance, inasmuch as the
Baron, always a shadowy personage, had finally been quite eclipsed by
his brilliant wife. He was said to be indifferent to her, but he seems
to have been always fairly amiable and very obedient. As it will not be
necessary to speak of him again, it may be mentioned here that he died in
1802, and that his last moments were soothed by the ministrations of his
wife, who, hearing that he was ill, travelled from Switzerland to France
to attend on him, and tried to bring him back with her to Coppet; but he
expired on the road at a place called Poligny.
Madame de Staël happened to be returning from Coppet to Paris on the 18th
Brumaire, when she learnt that her carriage had passed that of her former
ally Barras, who was returning to his estate at Grosbois accompanied
by gendarmes. The name of “Bonaparte” was on everybody’s lips—the
first time, as she remarks, that such a thing had happened since the
Revolution. The state of things which she found on entering the capital
was of a kind to excite her imagination. Five weeks of intrigue had
ripened Napoleon’s opportunity, and the 19th Brumaire dawned on a France
exhausted and enslaved.
From that moment Madame de Staël’s _rôle_ was marked out for her
irrevocably as one of perpetual opposition. At no time inclined to
silence, she was, we may be sure, both loud and intrepid in her
denunciation of the new tyranny. At first Napoleon appeared disposed
to win her over. Joseph Bonaparte, who was her friend and frequented
her salon, came to her once with something that sounded like a message.
Napoleon had asked why Madame de Staël would not give in her adhesion to
his Government. Did she want the two millions to be paid to her father,
or residence in Paris accorded him? There should be no difficulty about
either. She had only to say what it was she wanted. Madame de Staël’s
answer is celebrated: “The question is not what I want, but what I think.”
Some protests against the growing despotism proceeded from the Tribunat,
and notably from Constant. It is superfluous to say that Madame de Staël
applauded these with fervor. It is well known how, the evening previous
to a celebrated speech which he was about to make, Constant consulted her
on the subject. She encouraged him warmly, although already perceiving
that the path which she had elected to tread would, in all likelihood,
lead to exile. The salon was full of her friends at the time, but
Constant warned her that, if he spoke the next day, everybody would
desert her. “You must obey your conscience,” she replied; but adds that,
had she known what she would have to suffer from that day, and throughout
the next ten years, her answer might have been different. But here we
think that Madame de Staël’s literary instinct carried her away. She was
very sincere, but very imaginative, and, when writing for the public, it
must often have been difficult for her to distinguish between what she
felt _before_ and _after_ the fact. Considering what her disposition was,
and the opportunities for eloquence afforded both to herself and Constant
by an attitude of hostility to Napoleon, it is impossible to resist the
conclusion that she enjoyed her opposition with one-half of her nature,
if she regretted its results with the other.
For some weeks after Constant’s speech Madame de Staël’s salon, usually
so animated, was silent and deserted. Joseph Bonaparte was forbidden by
his brother to attend it; but most people needed no prohibition, they
absented themselves of their own accord under various pretexts. Fouché,
the Minister of Police, called on her, and insinuated that a brief
retirement into the country would be advisable, as giving the storm time
to blow over. She took the hint, and retired for a short time to St.
Ouen. On her return to Paris she avers that she did not find Napoleon’s
wrath at all appeased. Apparently she expected it to die a spontaneous
death, for she did not adopt the only means by which she could have
pacified him, but continued to applaud, if not instigate, an active
hostility to his measures. It would have been grand and magnanimous of
Napoleon to have despised the enmity of a woman, but he was neither grand
nor magnanimous. Moreover, the last thing which Madame de Staël probably
desired was to be despised. Nobody can deny her the meed of admiration
which she deserved for her love of liberty, and the indomitable spirit
with which, when in exile, she refused to conciliate her oppressor by one
word of praise. But, inasmuch as she knew with whom she had to deal, and
what would be the consequence of her actions, one must admit that the
amount of pity which she claimed for herself, and has generally received,
is excessive. She was in direct contradiction to her own theories of a
woman’s true duty, when interfering in politics; and in being treated by
Napoleon as a man might have been, she paid the penalty of the splendid
intellect which emancipated her from the habits and the views, if not
from the weaknesses, of her sex. She was neither helpless nor harmless,
since she could stir up enemies to the tyrant by her eloquence, and
revenge herself, when punished, by the power of her pen. She was exiled
not because she was a woman and defenceless, but because she was a genius
and formidable. She deliberately engaged in a contest of which the object
was to prove who was the stronger—herself or Napoleon.
She came out of it scarred, but dauntless. What right had she to complain
because the weapons that wounded her were keen?
Besides, paltry as Napoleon showed himself in many respects, he was a
phenomenon of so exceptional a nature that to judge him by ordinary
standards was absurd. It was the weakness of France which made his
opportunity; and if the epoch had not been abnormal, he never could have
dominated it. The people whom he governed had two courses open to them:
to submit or to protest. The first brought profit, the second glory; and
the glory which is purchased by no sacrifice is unworthy of the name.
In 1801 Madame de Staël published her work on _Literature_, in which, as
she says, there was not a word concerning Napoleon, although “the most
liberal sentiments were expressed in it with force.” The book produced
an immense sensation; and Parisian society, in its admiration for the
writer, forgot the First Consul’s displeasure, and again crowded round
her. She admits that the winter of 1801 was a pleasant one. Napoleon,
passing through Switzerland the previous summer, had seen and spoken
with M. Necker. It is characteristic of both interlocutors that the
ex-statesman was far more impressed with the warrior than the latter
with him. Necker divined in the young hero a strength of will to which
his own hesitating nature was a stranger; while Napoleon, on his side,
penetrating but prejudiced, contemptuously described the once august
financier in two words, “A banker and an Idealist.” With his usual
cynicism, he attributed Necker’s visit to the desire of employment;
whereas Madame de Staël affirmed that her father’s chief object was to
plead her cause. In this he was so far successful that residence in
France was for some time at least assured to her. “It was,” she writes,
“the last time that my father’s protecting hand was extended over my
life.” For the moment, either this beneficent influence, or, as is more
likely, a passing fit of good humor on the part of Napoleon, enabled her
to enjoy existence. Fouché consented to recall several _émigrés_ for
whom she interceded, and even Joseph Bonaparte once again treated her
with cordiality, and entertained her for a little time at his estate at
Morfontaine.
A variety of circumstances arose to put an end to this state of things
and to revive Napoleon’s dislike to Madame de Staël. Her father published
his work, _Dernières Vues de Politique et de Finance_, with the avowed
intention of protesting against Napoleon’s growing tyranny. His daughter
had encouraged him in this feeling, herself unable, as she declares,
to silence this “Song of the Swan.” Then Bernadotte had inaugurated
a certain sullen opposition to the First Consul, and Madame de Staël
immediately became his friend. Finally, her salon was more crowded than
ever, and by great personages, such as the Prince of Orange and other
embryo potentates, besides foreigners of celebrity in letters and science.
Napoleon detested salons. It was his conviction that a woman who disposed
of social influence might do anything in France, inasmuch as he held that
the best brains in the country were female. Madame de Staël, moreover,
possessed the art of keeping herself well before the public. Even now she
had just published _Delphine_, and all the papers were full of it. To
please Napoleon, they condemned it as immoral—a strange criticism in that
age, and an excellent advertisement in any.
Napoleon, on Madame de Staël’s again visiting Switzerland, hinted to
Lebrun that she would do well not to return to Paris. His obsequious
colleague hastened to intimate this by letter; and although the
communication was not official, the First Consul’s lightest intimations
by this time carried so much weight that Madame de Staël was compelled to
obey. She did so very reluctantly; and perhaps if her father’s prudence
had not been greater than her own, her longing to be back in the capital
would have overpowered every other consideration. As it was, she made
the best that she could of a year’s uninterrupted sojourn at Coppet.
The Tribunat meanwhile had shown itself again rebellious. Bonaparte,
irritated, declared that he would shake twelve or fifteen of its members
“from his clothes like vermin,” and Constant had no choice but to rejoin
his friend in Switzerland.