lish editor, and then of M. Thiers, that the great, the irreconcilable "Corinne" herself, gave in a tardy but complete adhesion. Ste. Beuve endorsed the error, and based his belief upon the style of an unsigned note in French found among Lord Castlereagh's posthumous papers, and attributed by Lord Londonderry's secretary to Madame de Staël. This letter was supposed to have been written at Coppet and forwarded to Mr. Crawford, the American minister in Paris, in order that he might take it to London. Its object was to inspire English statesmen with the writer's own belief in Napoleon's new-found sincerity, and to recommend his government to their support.
A comparison of dates shows, however, that such a letter, if despatched from Coppet, could only have reached Paris twenty-four hours after Mr. Crawford's departure, and Thiers's assumption that Madame de Staël remained in Paris during the Hundred Days is disproved by her correspondence from Switzerland with Madame Récamier. Finally, and again according to Thiers, Sismondi's conversion was a result of Madame de Staël's own change of views. But this also appears quite untenable, inasmuch as Sismondi himself bears testimony to her resentment against Napoleon, strengthened, as he says, "to a blind and violent hatred." This is the natural language of a person who has veered about of another person who has not, and the expression occurs in a letter of Sismondi's written from Coppet a short time after Waterloo, and when he had gone to the château in some doubt as to the nature of the reception there awaiting him. He had been much relieved to find his hostess as cordial as ever. Madame de Staël, indeed, never seems to have willingly or spontaneously
