Page:Madame de Staël (1887 Bella Duffy).djvu/138

The blow to Madame de Staël was a terrible one. Her first impulse was to go to America; but fearing the long sea-voyage for her daughter at that season of the year (it was October), she once again set her face most reluctantly towards Coppet. This place, which she henceforward describes as a "prison," was shortly afterwards made further distasteful to her by a change of Prefect. Monsieur de Barante, who was a friend of hers, was removed, and the successor appointed to him, M. Capelle, was one of the functionaries now turned out by the gross from the Imperial mould. He regarded Napoleon as a deity and himself as his prophet, and conceived the brilliant idea of distinguishing himself by persuading Madame de Staël to write something flattering of the Emperor. Naturally he failed: the mind of a bureaucrat prostrate before the fetich of his own alarmed idolatry alone could have conceived the possibility of success. And naturally, again, his failure rankled, and caused him to visit his disappointment on the creator of it by numerous small vexations.

 

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