of which is
that of Monsieur Necker. The next room is the large library, with
furniture of blue and white; and the next, hung with old Gobelin
tapestry, is the room where Madame Recamier used to sit with Madame de
Stael, and look out upon the exquisite scenery, restful even in their
troubled lives. Here is the work-table of her whom Macaulay called
"the greatest woman of her times," and of whom Byron said, "She is
a woman by herself, and has done more than all the rest of them
together, intellectually; she ought to have been a man."

Next we enter the drawing-room, with carpet woven in a single piece;
the furniture red and white. We stop to look upon the picture of
Monsieur Necker, the father, a strong, noble-looking man; of the
mother, in white silk dress, with powdered hair, and very beautiful;
and De Stael herself, in a brownish yellow dress, with low neck and
short sleeves, holding in her hand the branch of flowers, which she
always carried, or a leaf, that thus her hands might be employed while
she engaged in the conversation that astonished Europe. Here also
are the pictures of the Baron, her husband, in white wig and military
dress; here her idolized son and daughter, the latter beautiful, with
mild, sad face, and dark hair and eyes.

What brings thousands to this quiet retreat every year? Because here
lived and wrote and suffered the only person whom the great Napoleon
feared, whom Galiffe, of Geneva, declared "the most remarkable woman
that Europe has produced"; learned, rich, the author of _Corinne_ and
_Allemagne_, whose "talents in conversation," says George Ticknor,
"were perhaps the most remarkable of any person that ever lived."

April 27, 1766, was the daughter of James Necker, Minister of Finance
under Louis XVI., a man of fine intellect, the author of fifteen
volumes; and Susanna, daughter of a Swiss pastor, beautiful, educated,
and devotedly Christian. Necker had become rich in early life through
banking, and had been made, by the republic of Geneva, her resident
minister at the Court of Versailles.

When the throne of Louis seemed crumbling, because the people were
tired of extravagance and heavy taxation, Necker was called to his
aid, with the hope that economy and retrenchment would save the
nation. He also loaned the government two million dollars. The home
of the Neckers, in Paris, naturally became a social centre, which the
mother of the family was well fitted to grace. Gibbon had been deep