CHAPTER XI.
MADAME DE STAËL AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL AT ROME.
Madame de Staël sought to solace her grief for her father's death by writing "The Private Life of Necker," a short sketch intended to serve as preface to a volume of his fragmentary writings. Constant spoke very feelingly of this sketch, and pronounced it to be a revelation of all that was best in the writer's head and heart. He said that all her gifts of mind and feeling were here devoted to express and adorn a single sentiment, one for which she claimed the sympathy of the world.
This is all quite true, but it is natural that the sketch should affect us less than it did Madame de Staël's contemporaries. Necker was a good and intelligent man. He had varied talents of no common order, and an incorruptibility of character which would be rare—given the circumstances—in any age, and, by his admirers, was supposed to be especially so in his. But joined to all these qualities in him were just the foibles which spoil an image for posterity. He had a profound compassion for what he considered the hardships of his lot. It is touching to read the way—so simple, loving, and yet ingenuous—in which
