and acts a thousand times worse disgrace every page of the annals of France. But Madame de Staël, always incapable of judging where the "pure and noble" interests of her father were concerned, can be pardoned for her exaggeration in this instance, as she had half France to share it. "All Paris," she says, "came to visit M. Necker in the twenty-four hours that preceded his departure. Even the Archbishop of Toulouse, already practically designated for M. de Calonne's successor, was not afraid to make his bow."
Offers of shelter poured in upon M. Necker, and the best châteaux in France were placed at his disposal. He finally elected the Château de Marolles, near Fontainebleau, although not, as he naïvely confesses in a letter to his daughter, without some secret misgivings as to "the decided taste in all things good and bad of dear mamma."
Thither Madame de Staël hastened to join him, and to console by her unfailing sympathy, her constant applause, and inexaustible admiration, a misfortune which, after all, had been singularly mitigated. M. Necker accepted all this homage as his due, and his magnanimous wish, that the Archbishop of Toulouse might serve the State and King better than he would have done, is recorded by his daughter with the unction of a true devotee. There is something adorably simple and genuine in all her utterances about this time. In a letter to her husband (who apparently never objected to play second fiddle to M. and Madame Necker) she directs him exactly how to behave at Court, so as to bring home with dignity, yet force, to their Majesties the wickedness of their conduct towards so great and good a man; and she
