rstand how a woman of genius
can have such a false, vulgar taste."

It can be easily comprehended how she might have bored the Prince by
pressing upon him at such length her ideas of the reconstruction of the
empire, for she often bored even those who really admired and
appreciated her by the torrents of her talk. She was not witty, but full
of rhetorical surprises, and had boundless stores of information upon
every subject. People do not like to be instructed, nor do they like to
be preached to, even by eloquent lips, and her great conversational
powers often made her dreaded rather than admired in general society.
While she was in Germany Goethe, who must be allowed the capability of
appreciating her, was wont to run away from her whenever he could, and
bore up under her eloquence with rather an ill grace when he could not
escape it. Schiller also, in whom she much delighted, was ungallant
enough to dislike her extremely. On the contrary, Talleyrand and many
other famous Frenchmen seemed never to weary of her, and have handed
down the tradition of her wonderful eloquence to a later generation. It
is probable that her excessive vivacity was more pleasing to the French
mind than to that of the English and Germans, and her lack of repose did
not weary them to the same extent. She retained her friends to the end
of her life, and they were the source of her greatest satisfaction. She
was loyal and devoted in the extreme to all whom she favored with her
friendship, and all such loved her with deep affection. Indeed, it may
be said that human nature was the only thing which much interested her.
She had no love for Nature, and would scarcely take the trouble to see
the Alps when in Switzerland, and said that if she were left to her own
feelings she would not open her window to see the bay of Naples for the
first time, but that she would travel five hundred leagues at any time
to see a great man she had not met before. She cared little for art, and
not much for literature as such, though she had a passion for ideas. Her
ideal life was a life of intellectual excitement,--constant intercourse
with minds of her own order. The improvisations of Corinne give one a
little idea what her conversation was like. Still she has been quoted as
saying that she would have exchanged all her talent for the one gift of
beauty which was denied her.

In the life of William Cullen Bryant we find the following passage
relating to Madame de St