d others, we
can readily imagine the impatience with which the great soldier would
sit at dinner, hastening to finish his meal, crowding the whole
ceremony into twenty minutes, gulping a glass or two of wine and a cup
of coffee, and then being interrupted by a fussy little female who
wanted to talk about the ethics of history, or the possibility of a new
form of government. Napoleon, himself, was making history, and writing
it in fire and flame; and as for governments, he invented governments
all over Europe as suited his imperial will. What patience could he
have with one whom an English writer has rather unkindly described as
"an ugly coquette, an old woman who made a ridiculous marriage, a
blue-stocking, who spent much of her time in pestering men of genius,
and drawing from them sarcastic comment behind their backs?"

Napoleon was not the sort of a man to be routed in discussion, but he
was most decidedly the sort of man to be bored and irritated by
pedantry. Consequently, he found Mme. de Stael a good deal of a
nuisance in the salons of Paris and its vicinity. He cared not the
least for her epigrams. She might go somewhere else and write all the
epigrams she pleased. When he banished her, in 1803, she merely crossed
the Rhine into Germany, and established herself at Weimar.

The emperor received her son, Auguste de Stael-Holstein, with much good
humor, though he refused the boy's appeal on behalf of his mother.

"My dear baron," said Napoleon, "if your mother were to be in Paris for
two months, I should really be obliged to lock her up in one of the
castles, which would be most unpleasant treatment for me to show a
lady. No, let her go anywhere else and we can get along perfectly. All
Europe is open to her--Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg; and if she wishes
to write libels on me, England is a convenient and inexpensive place.
Only Paris is just a little too near!"

Thus the emperor gibed the boy--he was only fifteen or sixteen--and
made fun of the exiled blue-stocking; but there was not a sign of
malice in what he said, nor, indeed, of any serious feeling at all. The
legend about Napoleon and Mme. de Stael must, therefore, go into the
waste-basket, except in so far as it is true that she succeeded in
boring him.

For the rest, she was an earlier George Sand--unattractive in person,
yet able to attract; loving love for love's sake, though seldom
receiving it in return; throwing herself at the head of every
distin