CHAPTER XII.
MADAME DE STAËL'S SECOND MARRIAGE.
Madame de Staël arrived at Coppet in a condition of despair, which she partially solaced by writing to Madame Récamier and thanking her again and again for the constancy of her friendship. Evidently many of her friends had already dropped away, or she fancied they had. Perhaps she wearied them a little with her lamentations, for one knows that silence was never her forte. But all at once a happy change came over her. Sismondi, writing to the Countess of Albany, mentioned the transformation, and spoke of their friend with admiration for her new-born but to him inexplicable courage. She had given up literary work, and no longer alluded to her afflictions; and yet, in spite of that, her gaiety was great and her conversation as charming and sparkling as ever. Sismondi doubtless considered that Reason—his beloved Reason was at last asserting its sway over "Corinne's" excitable imagination. He must have been greatly surprised a long time afterwards when he learnt that the magician was Love. Years previously, when Sismondi had himself been in love in his decorous fashion, and had reproached Madame de Staël for a want of sympathy in his trouble—a want which he had not expected in the author of Delphine—she said to him: "I have never loved that I have not felt in myself two persons—one who laughed at the other." But when she made that answer she was young and restless, and, like all great and burning minds, claimed from life a destiny too radiant to be ever realised. Now she was middle-aged; she had drunk of the waters of bitterness and known some of the tragic awakenings of passion; she had experienced an immeasurable sorrow in the loss of her father; she had become familiar to satiety with the triumphs of the world; and was, as she wrote to Madame Récamier, "wearied of suffering." In short, the moment had come when the one imperious cry of her soul was for peace. In such a state of mind what seems ridiculous becomes possible, and the spirit of mocking youth in Madame de Staël, which once could laugh at the passionate half of her nature, was buried with most of her hopes and almost all of her illusions.
It was shortly after her return to Switzerland that, going to Geneva to spend some little while, she first met Rocca. He was twenty-three, she was forty-five; but that disparity of years did not prevent his conceiving for her a most romantic passion. He was extremely handsome—a fact to which Frederica Brun and Byron alike bear witness, and was further interesting through having been wounded in the war in Spain, and so badly that his health was never restored. He was the son of a Councillor of State in Geneva, and descended from a noble Piedmontese family which had emigrated to Switzerland during the persecution of the Protestants. He had some culture and considerable intelligence; was even something of an author; and, finally, was a splendid horseman. He was wont to ride a magnificent black Andalusian steed, and performed unheard-of feats of jumping and galloping under the windows of the house in Geneva where Madame de Staël was staying. These varied attractions finally proved irresistible to the object of his homage, and before the year 1811 a secret marriage took place. Why it was a secret is one of those mysteries which has never been satisfactorily cleared up. One explanation is that Bonaparte, out of hatred of Madame de Staël, would order Rocca, who, of course, was in the French army, away on service. But if this had been the real reason, it was sufficiently strong to have rendered any further explanation unnecessary. Nevertheless, a very good authority, the authoress of Coppet et Weimar, gives two other reasons: one that Madame de Staël would "never have consented to give up the aristocratic name which she had made so illustrious"; the other, that the world would have turned such a marriage into ridicule. In this connection it is worth while to state that Constant has given Madame de Staël's unwillingness to change her name as a reason why she would not consent to an open marriage with him.
The union with Rocca seems to have been a very happy one; but inasmuch as it passed for years in the eyes of everybody for a connection of another nature, there is no doubt that it brought Madame de Staël into some discredit. Many of the guests at Coppet admired Rocca, but Sismondi, for one, disliked him extremely. Sismondi, however, was not unfrequently disposed to be rather severe on Madame de Staël and her guests; he even carped a little at the lovely Juliette. "She (Madame Récamier) has put in a fleeting appearance here," he wrote in August 1811. "She is full of kindness and graciousness towards Madame de Staël, and is not less pretty than two years ago, and yet I am glad that she is going. For whenever she is present, all true conversation is destroyed. She always beguiles her neighbour into low-toned tête-à-tête talk. Her small airs and graces weary me, and her intelligence—for she is intelligent—in no way profits the public."
Sismondi sometimes visited Madame de Staël herself with criticism not less captious, although he was generally vanquished in the end by her heroism and her charm. During the summer of 1811 she was in a very restless and unhappy mood, which often drew forth his censure.
The conviction of the extreme disfavour with which Napoleon regarded her was now widely spread, and one of its results was a real or fancied falling-off of friends, which wounded her exceedingly. To nothing was she so sensitive as to any failure of affection, and the ardour with which she sought to defend herself from blame was caused not so much by offended self-love as by slighted feeling of a more amiable kind. Just about this time she wrote to Camille Jordan a very characteristic letter. Its tone was indignant, for Jordan, always rather cold and repellent, had evidently stung her by some censure of her conduct. Apparently also, he had sought to justify himself for not coming to see her, for she assured him that she had never dreamed of blaming him, nor entertained a thought against his loyalty. She quivered under a shaft which had struck more deeply home, and in one sentence made an allusion applying apparently to Rocca. She owned that being placed, as it appeared to her, on the highest pinnacle of moral dignity, she had felt some wonder at the fact that Jordan, "indulgent towards the inconceivable conduct of Girando," should have reserved all his wrath for an unhappy woman who, "while resisting all attacks and defending her children and her talent at the risk of happiness, security, and life," had allowed herself to be momentarily touched by the self-sacrificing chivalry of a young man. Her anger was but fleeting, and a few months later she wrote as affectionately as ever to Camille, who, perhaps, for once had been shaken from his prudent calm by her fiery words, and had calmed her by protesting unaltered regard.
This year of 1811 was fruitful of sorrow. Mathieu de Montmorency and Madame Récamier were both exiled immediately after a visit paid by them to their illustrious friend. According to Madame Lenormant, the writer of Coppet et Weimar, as well as to Madame de Staël herself, the letter from the Minister of Police which conveyed the order of exile to Mathieu de Montmorency distinctly signified that friendship with the mistress of Coppet was the cause of his disgrace. Sismondi, however, who showed himself incredulous and to a certain extent unsympathising throughout all these circumstances, when writing to the Countess of Albany, was concerned to correct such an impression, and declared that not only had the Prefect of Geneva and the Minister of the French Police disclaimed the idea as unfounded, but he himself had never seen that anybody was in the least compromised by going to Coppet. Nevertheless, in a very short time Schlegel was ordered to quit the Château on the preposterous plea that he had pronounced the Phœdra of Euripides to be superior to that of Racine! Madame de Staël went to Aix for the sake of her youngest son's health, but at the end of ten days was recalled by a letter from the Prefect, who advised her not to venture more than two leagues from Coppet. Very naturally she was irritated to the last degree and often deeply distressed at all these incidents. The exile imposed on Mathieu de Montmorency and Madame Récamier caused her the greatest grief, more especially as she never doubted but that unwittingly she was the cause. She had other causes of suffering also in her health at the time, and doubtless was far from being as brilliant as of yore.
Circumstances (she had a son by Rocca in 1812) condemned her to an isolation which fretted her almost beyond endurance; and Sismondi, not possessing the key to the situation, was aggrieved at her sombre mood and nervous irritability. He wrote that he sometimes "bores himself" at Coppet (O Ichabod!); and he was reduced to take refuge with sundry amiable persons at Geneva who soothed his wounded self-love.
At last Madame de Staël—inconsolable for the loss of Schlegel's society, panting to escape beyond the narrow limits of Coppet, where her sons had no career before them, and her daughter no chance of marrying, and she herself was harassed by hints and admonitions from the Prefect at every turn—resolved upon escape. She was informed through Schlegel, who was in Berne at the time, that if she would even now write something in praise of Napoleon her fate would be considerably mitigated. It is no slight credit to her that, agitated and ill as she was, she firmly declined. Nothing, indeed, at such a moment could have been more courageous than her refusal, for she was torn with a thousand fears at her impending journey. The passport would have been an insuperable difficulty, as the permission to go to America, once accorded, had now been withdrawn from her; entrance into Italy was also denied, and the Government was determined that she should not take refuge in England. Yet to England she was resolved to go. The only route open to her was through Russia and Sweden. Through her friend the Grand Duchess of Weimar she obtained a passport, which was to be handed to her in Vienna. All this took months to settle, and it was only on the 23rd of May 1812 that she was at last able to start. It was necessary to leave in such a way as not to excite the attention of the lynx-eyed Prefect of Geneva.
The eve of her departure she wandered about the park of Coppet, a prey to the utmost grief. She had been unwilling to return there at one time, but now she was heartbroken at having to bid a long, perhaps a last, farewell to the tomb of her father and the scenes associated with his memory. To her, both by nature and system, such a parting was particularly poignant.
At 2 o'clock on the afternoon of the 23rd, she got into into her carriage, announcing that she would return for dinner. Only two of her servants were in the secret. Albertine, Auguste, and Rocca were with her; her second son was to follow in a few days, and join her at Vienna with her baggage. For the present, all the necessaries which the travellers absolutely needed were stowed away in the pockets of Auguste and Rocca; Madame de Staël and Albertine only carried fans.
The escape thus ingeniously planned was carried out with a success that it is quite pleasant to read of, even to this moment. The police never awoke at all to the fact of the flight until the luggage followed the fugitives, and then Madame de Staël was beyond their reach. History draws a veil over the feelings of the Prefect.
At Berne, Schlegel joined the party, and Auguste de Staël separated from it, in order to return to Coppet and see after things there. The travellers pushed on, but, because of Madame de Staël's health, in no great haste, through Switzerland and the Tyrol. Her one haunting fear all this time was that in Bavaria an agent of the French Government might have preceded her with an order for her arrest. The abject subservience of the German Governments at that time to Napoleon made it very likely that in such a case passports would be so much waste-paper.
Vienna was reached in safety, and there Madame de Staël at first determined to remain three weeks, while a courier was despatched to Wilna to obtain the Russian passport from the Emperor Alexander. The first ten days of her sojourn were marked by cloudless pleasure. Security had returned to her; and, after her late repression, varied chiefly by the Prefect of Geneva's solemn exhortations, it was a real delight to find herself in the midst of a society where Napoleon was frankly abused. But the Emperor and Empress of Austria were at Dresden, and the official mind, left to itself, soon became frightened at the idea of sheltering the dangerous authoress. Spies were stationed at her door, and cropped up, like poisonous fungi, with silent rapidity along her path. Moreover, an order had arrived for the arrest and return of Rocca as a French officer—the fact of his wounds and inability to serve being waived in the interests of persecution. At this point, one pauses to ask why, after all, Madame de Staël herself was not arrested. There seems but little doubt that the obsequiousness of the Austrian police would have been equal to the task. Perhaps Napoleon shrank from the odium of such a proceeding; perhaps he was, in reality, rather glad to be rid of Madame de Staël. This would agree with a well-known conversation which he had held four years previously with Auguste de Staël, who, going to him to plead for his mother's recall, was told, with insolent, good-humoured contempt, that the whole of Europe, except France, was open to her; that she would not be imprisoned, as then she might have some cause to complain, but that she alone could be unhappy when allowed to wander at will through every capital of Europe except Paris.
But if this explanation be accepted, it becomes difficult to account for the later persecutions of Madame de Staël at the hands of the French and Swiss police. Could it be that Savary and his underlings, through excess of zeal, interpreted their instructions with liberal severity, and that Napoleon was not responsible for every individual act, but only for the angry hatred which promised approval of each and all of them?
However this may be, Madame de Staël's fears were not long in reasserting themselves. Too impatient to wait for the passport, she started with her son and daughter for Galicia, having extracted from a friend the promise of hurrying after her as soon as the expected paper arrived. In her Memoirs she admits that this was a mistake; for at Vienna she had friends to intercede in her favour, while in Galicia there was no shield between herself and the servility towards France of inferior officials. As a consequence she was driven along her route by the unceasing admonitions to "move on" of the police. Her immediate goal was Lanzut—the home of her friends Prince and Princess Lubomirski. Here she was to meet Rocca, who had also proceeded on his way, but disguised. At some point of the road her passport reached her. This was a ray of light; and a letter from Madame Récamier, which overtook her somewhere near Olmutz, was another. But, as a rule, her sensations were all gloomy. The discomforts of her journey through such a country and under such circumstances increased her sadness, to which the finishing touch was put by the aspect of the desolated countries, and of the overtaxed starving populations withering beneath the Napoleonic blight, and mingling curses on the oppressor with prayers to heaven for relief.
These tragic pictures were ludicrously, but by no means reassuringly relieved by the sight of placards, in the various towns where the passports had to be examined, which ordained that Madame de Staël was to be submitted, wherever she appeared, to the surveillance of the police!
At Lanzut she had been informed that she was not to stay more than twenty-four hours. This, however, was previous to her receiving the Russian passport. With that to show, she hoped for more indulgence.
The hope was vain, for at Lanzut a police agent presented himself, having received orders from his chief, the Governor of the district, to see that Madame de Staël did not remain more than eight hours at the Lubomirski's Château. And when she left, he followed her carriage in a calèche, thus causing her much alarm lest Rocca, on joining them, should be recognised.
Fifty leagues of Austrian territory had still to be traversed. The police agent, who is described as carrying out his instructions with a most vexatious pertinacity, quitted the travellers at the limit of his "circle"; but Madame de Staël says that grenadiers were still found posted along the route to observe her, and she did not breathe freely until she found herself on Russian territory. Even there she could not allow herself to feel quite secure, for Napoleon's huge army—destined by its apparent power and its oncoming doom to typify the falling might of France—was hastening by forced marches to Moscow; and Madame de Staël, to avoid meeting it, had to reach St. Petersburg by a circuitous route. Her terror of being arrested and imprisoned still abode with her; she was evidently convinced that the Emperor was furious with her for having escaped his clutches; and she began seriously to consider what she would do if any portion of the army threatened to overtake her. Her plan was to hasten on to Odessa, and thence proceed to Greece and Constantinople.
Fortunately, her companions succeeded in persuading her that she could travel, by post, much faster than an army; and partially calmed, she at last gave herself up to some enjoyment of the scenes and people around her. Her Dix Années d'Exil, always vivid, becomes from this point a charming book. She is a little too optimistic, and indulges, as usual, too much in generalization, but seizes on salient points with swiftness, and describes them with remarkable force.
She was delighted with her reception by the nobles, and the Imperial family. Of the Czar she speaks with a fervent admiration that later generations have not shared. He had the facile amiability and conventional philanthropy of a sovereign who finds his benevolent theories so constantly crossed by circumstances as to release him, in most instances, from the responsibility of applying them. But any promise of political reform and any appeal to general principles of excellence, found so ready a response in Madame de Staël's own heart that, especially where a monarch spoke, she ceased to be severely critical.
According to Galiffe, she met in Russia with immense social success, and enchanted everybody. He, personally, found her much improved since the days of her brilliant, but too self-asserting youth.
Stein was struck with her air of simplicity and goodness, and sought to convey her great unaffectedness of manner by saying that "she gave herself no trouble to please"—quite a man's judgment on a woman, and curiously inaccurate as a necessary consequence. Madame de Staël was so intensely interested in every new person who appeared to her at all distinguished, that she must always have cared supremely to please. But what Stein probably meant was that she had none of the airs and graces of worldly coquettes; and very often, when launched in conversation, she must have been more bent on convincing than seducing.
Madame de Staël passes over in her Memoirs a scene at the theatre, during her visit to St. Petersburg, which wounded her deeply, and is related by Arndt. She went with her son and somebody else to the "Théatre Français," to see Racine's Phèdre. Scarcely was she seated, when somebody in the pit denounced her and her companions as French. Instantly the people rose and clamoured for them to be turned out. The performance was stopped; the actors decamped; and poor Madame de Staël, sobbing with indignation and grief, was led away. Even then she felt the insult chiefly as levelled at Racine, and repeated incessantly, "Oh! les barbares, les barbares! Oh, mon Racine!" Arndt was rather astonished at her taking such a scene so much to heart; but, on reflection, arrived at the conclusion that German women might be the better for a little of the same passionate patriotism.
But unpleasant incidents during her stay in the Russian capital seem to have been few. She visited several institutions; was received everywhere with politeness and cordiality; and revelled again, as she had done in Vienna, in listening to the free expression of sentiments that agreed with her own. Events, however, were progressing rapidly, and, in spite of the engagement never to sign a peace entered into by the Czar with Bernadotte at Abo, the battle of Borodino and the taking of Moscow filled most people with dismay. Madame de Staël, always easily alarmed, thought that the moment had arrived when she could no longer remain in Russia with safety, and she set her face towards Sweden, en route for England; thus quitting St. Petersburg a few days too soon to receive in all its force the electric shock of learning that Moscow was fired. At Abo, where she was to embark for Stockholm, she met Bernadotte, now Prince Royal of Sweden, whom she had formerly known in Paris as an habitué of her own and Madame Récamier's salon. Of course he admired the lovely Juliette, and hastened to inquire after her with an interest which Madame de Staël straightway conveyed in a letter to her friend—a letter worded, however, with a caution that reveals the inconceivable difficulty even of private correspondence in those stormy days.
At Stockholm she was welcomed, according to her son, with "perfect kindness"; and as she was notoriously enthusiastic about Bernadotte, whom she unhesitatingly pronounced to be "the hero of the age," it is probable that he honoured her with a great deal of his confidence. Galiffe (author of D'un siècle à l'autre), who had access to her correspondence from Sweden with J. A. Galiffe in St. Petersburg, was of opinion that her influence had a large share in determining Bernadotte to declare himself against Bonaparte.
She dedicated her Réflexions sur le Suicide, to the Prince in a very complimentary preface, in which she compared herself and her children as seeking his protection in the same way as Arabian Shepherds take shelter from a storm "under a laurel"; and went on to assure him that his public life had been signalised by all the virtues which claim the admiration of thinkers, and she encouraged him to persevere and remind the world of that which it had entirely forgotten, namely, that the highest reason teaches virtue. In contrast to all this praise, it is piquant to learn that Bernadotte—like so many other practically-minded people—had his little grumble at his illustrious guest; and talked of the "inconceivable preoccupation with self," which by this time had led Madame de Staël to see in every political move of Napoleon the beginning of some new measure against herself.
Her oft-professed anxiety about her sons' future was allayed by the Prince Royal's offer to interest himself in Auguste's diplomatic career, while Albert was to enter the Swedish army.
One might wonder why this obvious solution of her difficulties had not presented itself sooner to Madame de Staël, were it not evident that she had consciously or unconsciously made the most of every circumstance which could heighten the apparent hardship of her lot.