CHAPTER VI.
MADAME DE STAËL RETIRES TO COPPET.
Madame de Staël arrived at Coppet about the beginning of September 1792. The life there, after her recent experiences in Paris, so far from seeming to her one of welcome rest, fretted her ardent spirit, almost beyond endurance. She longed to be back in France, even under the shadow of the guillotine, anywhere but in front of the lake, with its inexorable beauty and maddening calm.
"The whole of Switzerland inspires me with magnificent horror," she wrote to her husband, who was still in Sweden. "Sometimes I think that if I were in Paris with a title which they would be forced to respect, I might be of use to a number of individuals, and with that hope I would brave everything. I perceive, with some pain, that the thing which least suits me in the world, is this peaceful and rustic life. I have put down my horses for economy's sake, and because I feel my solitude less when I do not see anybody."
By "anybody" it is to be presumed that she meant the good Swiss, whose expressions of horror, doubtless as monotonous as reiterated, must have been irritating
