the
pleasures of the next day. But this mode of existence was undermining
her health.

She endured this constant strain until one evening in February,
1817, when, at a ball at the Duke of Decazes's, in the midst of her
pleasure, she was stricken with paralysis. At the Rue des Mathurins,
she had all her friends come and dine with her. Chateaubriand, who
was one of the party, entered her room upon one occasion and found her
suffering intensely, but able to raise herself and say: "Bonjour, my
dear Francis! I am suffering, but that does not hinder me from loving
you." She lingered until July, when there ended a life which not only
influenced but even modified politics and the institutions of nations,
which exercised, by writings, an incalculable influence upon French
literature, opening paths which previously had not been trod.

The most important of her works is _De l'Allemagne_, in writing which
her only desire was to make Germany known to the French, to explain
it by comparison with France and to make her people admire it, and
to open new paths to poetry. According to her, Germany possessed no
classic prose, because the Germans attributed less importance to style
than did the French. German poetry, however, had a distinct charm,
being all sentiment and poetry of the soul, touching and penetrating;
whereas French poetry was all _esprit_, eloquence, reason, raillery.

In her treatise on the drama, she was the first in French literature
to use the term "romantic" and to define it; but she had not invented
the word, Wieland having used it to designate the country in which the
ancient Roman literature flourished. Her definition was: "The classic
word is sometimes taken as a synonym of perfection. I use it in
another acceptance by considering classic poetry that of the ancients
and romantic poetry that which holds in some way to the chivalresque
traditions. The literature of the ancients is a transplanted
literature with us; but romantic or chivalresque literature is
indigenous. An imitation of works coming from a political, social,
and religious midst different from ours means a literature which is
no longer in relation with us, which has never been popular, and
which will become less so every day. On the contrary, the romantic
literature is the only one which is susceptible of being perfected,
because it bears its roots from our soil and is, consequently, the
only one which can be revived and increased. It expresses our