though
there is no clear evidence that Pitt was apprised of the wish of the
Neckers. She was then only seventeen, and her vehement protest against
an English marriage nipped the project in the bud. In 1786, however, a
marriage was negotiated for her with the Swedish ambassador, the Baron
de Stael, who was at that time a special favourite of Gustavus III. It
was a marriage into which but little affection entered, and twelve
years later it ended in a separation. There was afterward, it is true,
a partial reconciliation, and she was present with her husband when he
died, in 1802, on the way from Paris to Coppet.

Her marriage gave her an independent position, and she mixed much in
the politics of the early days of the Revolution. She corresponded
regularly with the Swedish King, and formed intimate friendships with
great numbers of the guiding politicians. The proudest moment of her
life was in August 1788, when, amid a transport of transient
enthusiasm and extravagant hopefulness, her father was for the second
time called to the helm. Her devotion to him amounted almost to
adoration, and she would never acknowledge, what the rest of the world
soon perceived, that, though excellently adapted to be Minister in
quiet, regular times, he had neither the daring nor the insight, nor
the commanding power, that was needed to guide the bark of State
through the fierce storms of the Revolution. She fully shared the
enthusiasm with which the opening of the States General was received.
She mentions that on that occasion she was watching the procession
from a window with Madame de Montmorin, wife of the Minister of
Foreign Affairs, and that as she expressed her delight, her companion
said: 'You are wrong in rejoicing; great calamities will follow from
this to France and to us.' The words were truly prophetic. Madame de
Montmorin perished on the scaffold with one of her sons; the other was
drowned. Her husband was murdered in prison during the massacre of the
second of September. Her eldest daughter died in the prison hospital.
Her youngest daughter withered away when not yet thirty,
broken-hearted by the calamities of her family.

Madame de Stael, too, soon discovered that no millennium was at hand.
She was an eye-witness of the terrible scenes of the fifth and sixth
of October, when Versailles was invaded by a half-famished mob, when
the guards were cut down and beheaded, and when the royal family were
brought captive to Paris. She