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
