CHAPTER VIII.
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 ardour, 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; hut 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 ardour, 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 clamour 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 wellordered 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 simpleminded. 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 endeavour 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 recognised 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 jeopardised 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 fervour. 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 humour 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.