light. At the age of
twenty she wrote: "A woman must have nothing to herself and must find
all power in that which she loves." Her masculine ideal was a man
of society, of success, a hero of the Academy, a superior genius,
animated more by the desire to please than to be useful. During these
early years she wrote a great deal, her work being mostly in the form
of sentimental utterances, but very little has survived her.

When she reached marriageable age, many ambitions of her parents were
frustrated by her independent will. Pitt, Mirabeau, Bonaparte, were
considered, but destiny had in store for her a Swedish ambassador,
Stael-Holstein, a man of good family, but with little money and plenty
of debts, who had been looking out for a comfortable dowry. In 1786,
at the time when Marie Antoinette was at the height of her popularity,
this girl of twenty years was married to a man seventeen years her
senior, who had no affection for her and whom she could not love.

At Paris she immediately opened a salon, which soon eclipsed, both in
beauty and wit, that of her mother; there her eloquence, enthusiasm,
and conversational gifts captivated all, but her imprudent language,
the recklessness of her conduct, her scorn of all etiquette, her
outspoken preferences, frightened away women and stunned men. Her
sympathy for her friends, Talleyrand, Narbonne, De Montmorency,
together with the approaching Revolution, drew her into politics. When
her father was called by the nation to the control of its finances,
his daughter shared his glories.

Her salon was the centre of the elite and of all literary and
political discussions; but as the majority of its frequenters were
partisans of the English constitution and expressed their views
openly and freely, her enemies became numerous. When Narbonne was made
minister of war, a great triumph for her and her party, the eloquence
of his reports was attributed to her, and when he fell into disgrace
she rescued him. However, the atmosphere of Paris was too unfriendly,
so she left in 1792 for her home at Coppet, which became an asylum
for all the proscribed. When she visited England, she began a
thorough study of its mode of life, its customs, and its parliamentary
institutions. Upon her return to Coppet she wrote _Reflexions sur le
Proces de la Reine_, to excite the commiseration of the judges. After
the death of her mother in 1794, she devoted her energies to the
education of her two boys.

Af