Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/270

XX. MADAME DE STAEL AND NAPOLEON BONAPAKTE. THE greatest compliment ever paid by a mwi to a woman was that which Napoleon Bonaparte j in the plenitude of his power, paid Madame De Stael, in exiling her from Paris. Here was a man, the greatest general of his age^ at the head of a warlike nation, commanding an army of many hundred thousand men, the arbiter of Europe, ai.d the lord of the world, except that part of it which could be reached and overawed by the English navy ; and! here was a woman, then of no great fortune or celebrity, receiving every evening a circle of friends in a modest drawing-room at Paris. They were antagonists, those two ! Both were foreigners — he an Italian-Corsican, she a Swiss. The man was dazzling and intoxicating France, while using her for purposes of his own. The woman would not be dazzled. In a city delirious she kept her senses. In a company drunk, she remained sober. Among a people dreaming, she was awake. And, gifted as she was by nature with an excellent mind, a humane heart, and an eloquent tongue, she had power to waken and restore other minds. Our English-speaking world will never see and vividly feel the turpitude of this man Bonaparte, as Madame De Stael saw and felt it, until his lying bulletins and brutal despatches are translated into our language. I have spent many hours and days in examining them, for they number thirty thousand, and fill thirty-two compact (262)