her
influence and work are so intimately associated with her life that
any account of her which aims at giving a true estimate of her
significance must necessarily involve much biography.

Her mother, the Mme. Necker of salon fame, endeavored to bring up her
daughter as the _chef d'oeuvre_ of natural art,--pious, modest in her
conversation, dignified in her behavior, without pride or frivolity,
but with wide knowledge. In this ambition she partly succeeded. At
the age of eleven the young girl was present at receptions, where
she listened to discussions by such men as Grimm, Buffon, Suard,
and others. Her parents took her to the theatre, and she would
subsequently compose short stories on what she had heard and seen.
Rousseau became her ideal, but she enjoyed all literature, showing an
insatiable desire for knowledge. From her early youth to her death,
her conversation was ever the result of her own impulse; consequently,
it was uncontrolled and lacked the seriousness imparted by deep
reflection.

Interested in all things except Nature, which seemed mournful to her,
while solitude horrified her, society was her delight. 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