ministrations of his wife, who, hearing that he was ill, travelled from Switzerland to France to attend on him, and tried to bring him back with her to Coppet; but he expired on the road at a place called Poligny.
Madame de Staël happened to be returning from Coppet to Paris on the 18th Brumaire, when she learnt that her carriage had passed that of her former ally Barras, who was returning to his estate at Grosbois accompanied by gendarmes. The name of "Bonaparte" was on everybody's lips—the first time, as she remarks, that such a thing had happened since the Revolution. The state of things which she found on entering the capital was of a kind to excite her imagination. Five weeks of intrigue had ripened Napoleon's opportunity, and the 19th Brumaire dawned on a France exhausted and enslaved.
From that moment Madame de Staël's rôle was marked out for her irrevocably as one of perpetual opposition. At no time inclined to silence, she was, we may be sure, both loud and intrepid in her denunciation of the new tyranny. At first Napoleon appeared disposed to win her over. Joseph Bonaparte, who was her friend and frequented her salon, came to her once with something that sounded like a message. Napoleon had asked why Madame de Staël would not give in her adhesion to his Government? Did she want the two millions to be paid to her father, or residence in Paris accorded him? There should be no difficulty about either. She had only to say what it was she wanted. Madame de Staël's answer is celebrated: "The question is not what I want, but what I think."
Some protests against the growing despotism proceeded from the Tribunat, and notably from Constant.
