hand, what woman's intellect was ever so unapproachable? At the time, however, of her first acquaintance with Constant, her literary reputation was still to make, and it is not to be wondered at, consequently, if Madame de Charrière felt more inclined to question than agree when informed that this restless female politician was a being of so superior a sort that her like could not be met with once in a century.
About 1796 Madame de Staël took a new departure. Perhaps thanks to Constant's enlightened views, perhaps thanks merely to her own common sense, she felt the full futility of reactionary effort, and ranged herself frankly on the side of the Directory. The royalist Club de Clichy was by this time an accomplished fact; and to neutralize its mischievous influence the Cercle Constitutionnel had been formed at the Hôtel de Salm. For some time Madame de Staël was the soul of these meetings, and Constant was their orator. Finally, when a fresh division in the Convention declared itself, and a large number of deputies deserted the Directory, Madame de Staël and Constant exerted themselves to prove that such dissensions could profit only the two extremes of Royalists or Terrorists, but never the Moderates. Naturally, the latter were deaf (when have Moderates eyes to see or ears to hear in moments of vital significance?), and Madame de Staël's worst previsions were justified by the events of the 18th Fructidor. The establishment, two years later, of the Consulate, while filling Madame de Staël's noble soul with dismay, offered Constant the opportunity assigned to him by his talents. He entered then upon the course of opposition from which he did not again deviate until sixteen years later, when he yielded either to Napoleon's personal charm, the fasci-
