her
nature. Affinity of genius and a common love of liberty drew Benjamin
Constant and her into intimate relations; and she maintained for
years still closer relations with the all-knowing, all-cultured
August Schlegel, whose devouring egotism and ever-sensitive vanity
put all her patience and generosity to the proof.

The current opinion concerning Madame de Stael, that she was an
exacting and disagreeable woman, is unjust. Schiller, who shrank from
her impetuous eloquence, and Heine, whose reckless satire depicts her
as going through Europe, a whirlwind in petticoats, both do her
wrong. William von Humboldt, who knew her well, pronounces a glowing
eulogy on her exalted traits, and says that Goethe, from prejudice
and ignorance, was very unjust to her. Madame Mole says, "Women are
not half grateful enough to Madame de Stael for the honor she
conferred upon her sex by taking up the noble side of every question,
armed with her pen and her eloquence, and never once calculating what
the consequences might be. As time goes on, and details sink into
insignificance, she will rise as the grand figure who withstood
Bonaparte at the head of six hundred thousand men, with Europe at his
back. His vanity was such that he could not bear one woman should
refuse to praise him; for that was her only guilt." She was capable
of the utmost magnanimity and disinterestedness. Every exalted
sentiment struck a powerful chord in her heart. She lived in justice,
freedom, beneficence, love, aspiration. The friendship of Matthieu de
Montmorency, the most intimate and devoted of all her friends, is
enough to prove her exalted worth, making every abatement for her
acknowledged foibles. This chivalrous nobleman came, in his youth, to
America with Lafayette, and fought for the new Republic. Although one
of the foremost members of the aristocracy, it was on his motion in
the Constituent Assembly that the privileges of the nobility were
abolished. Sympathy in opinions and in the generous strain of their
characters was the basis of a connection between him and Madame de
Stael, that constantly grew in strength with the trials to which it
was subjected, and was not severed even by death. When his brother,
ardently loved, fell under the axe of the Revolution, it was her
delicate sympathy, her ingenious and indefatigable goodness, that
first soothed his anguish, assuaged the horror that threatened his
reason, and prepared the way for religion and peace. An