man
perplexed and baffled his calculations, acting on them as the sign of
the cross acts on the machinations of a demon. The superiority which
so clearly shone in his conversation was not that of a mind cultivated
by study and by society; it was the supreme insight into the
circumstances of life possessed by a mighty hunter of men. There was
something in him, she said, like a cold and trenchant sword, which at
the same moment could wound and chill.

Such was the estimate she formed of the man who, nearly at the same
time, was presented by Talleyrand to the Directory as 'the pacificator
of Europe,' as a hero 'who despised luxury and pomp--the wretched
ambition of common souls--and who loved the poems of Ossian,
especially because they detach men from the earth'! That two such
different natures should come into collision was very natural.
Bonaparte always hated superior women, and especially women who
meddled in politics. He well knew that the circle of Madame de Stael
was the centre of ideas about freedom and constitutional government
irreconcilably opposed to his ambition, and that the world of good
society and good taste, of independent thought and independent
characters, in which she played so great a part, remained unsubdued
and undazzled by his power. Benjamin Constant had been placed in 'the
Tribunate,' and in the beginning of 1800 he made a speech there,
indicating a desire to establish in that body an opposition like the
opposition in the English Parliament. Bonaparte was furious at his
attitude, and at once ascribed it to the inspiration of Madame de
Stael. A year later the last work of her father appeared, and it
contained an earnest warning against growing despotism in France and a
strong argument for the establishment of a republican constitution.
The sayings of Madame de Stael that were repeated from lip to lip, and
the atmosphere of thought that grew up around her, irritated and
disquieted Bonaparte. 'She is moving the minds of men,' he said, 'in a
direction that does not suit me.' 'They pretend that she does not
speak of politics or of me, but somehow it always happens that those
who have been with her become less attached to me.' Soon her salon was
emptied by an emphatic intimation that those who entered it would
incur the displeasure of the First Consul. Official scribes were
busily employed in depreciating her, and these measures were speedily
followed by the long exile which darkened the later years o