her; or perhaps Madame de Staël's own letter, in which she spoke of her children's education and her father's advanced age, and betrayed in every line her haunting fear of exile, enlightened Napoleon as to the tenderest spot in which to wound her. Disliking her as he did, and irritated by the mere thought of her as he seems to have been, it would have been highly characteristic of his southern malice to be decided in his course by the very prayers that should have deterred him.
However that may be, she was sitting at table with her friends one late September afternoon when she perceived a rider, dressed in grey, pull up at her gate and ring the bell. This prosaic-looking individual was the messenger of destiny. She felt it at once, although he did not wear the dreaded uniform. He was the bearer of a letter signed by Napoleon, and ordering her to depart within twenty-four hours for any place not nearer than forty leagues to Paris.
Needless to say, Madame de Staël did not submit without protest; and represented so energetically to the gendarme that a woman and three children could not be hurried off with no more preparation than a recruit's, as to induce him to allow her three days at Paris in which to get ready.
On their way they stopped for a few moments at Madame Récamier's, and there found General Junot, who, like everybody else, was one of Juliette's admirers. Perhaps to please the latter, he promised to intercede with the despot for her illustrious friend; and he was, as it appears, so far successful that Napoleon accorded permission for Madame de Staël to reside at Dijon. As soon as Madame Récamier received this news she communicated it in a letter to
