ous advances to win his favor.
Bourrienne declares that he saw one of her letters to Bonaparte, in
which she flatly stated that they two, she herself and her
correspondent, had been created for each other. Mention has elsewhere
been made of the coldness with which Bonaparte treated her when by her
own request she was presented to him in Talleyrand's drawing-room. Not
long afterward, at the reception given by the minister of foreign
affairs to the conqueror of Italy, the indefatigable seeker for
notoriety addressed the latter once again.

The scene is given in the memoirs of Arnault. At first she plied her
suit with fulsome compliment. Bonaparte listened coldly, and the
conversation flagged. In despair she blurted out, "General, what woman
could you love the most?" "My own," was the stinging reply. ("Quelle
femme?" "La mienne.") Woman and wife being the same word in French,
Napoleon's retort was a disdainful pun. "Very well; but which would
esteem you the highest?" she persisted. "The best housekeeper." "Yes,
I understand; but which one would be for you the foremost among
women?" "She who should bear the most children, madame," was the icy
rejoinder, as the harried and disgusted soldier turned on his heel.
Somewhat later she said to Lucien in a melting voice, "I am but a fool
in my desire to please your brother. I am at a loss when I wish to
converse with him. I choose my language and modify my expressions; I
want to make him think of me and occupy himself with me. It ends in my
being and feeling as silly as a goose." When the complacent Lucien
reported the language his brother replied: "I know her thoroughly....
She declared to one who informed me that since I would neither love
her nor permit her to love me, there was nothing left but for her to
hate me, as she could not remain indifferent. What a virago!" In a
letter to Joseph, dated March nineteenth, 1800, the future Emperor
wrote: "M. de Stael is in the depths of misery, and his wife is giving
dinners and balls. If you should continue to see her, would it not be
well to have the woman allow her husband one thousand or one thousand
two hundred francs a month? Have we already reached a time when,
without any protest from decent people, not merely morality but the
most sacred ties which bind children to their parents can be trampled
under foot? Suppose we judge Mme. de Stael as we should a man,--only,
of course, as a man inheriting the fortune of M. de Necker,--one who