hateau, like little oysters around the
parent shell. This is the village of Coppet that you behold, and the
central building that seems to be a part of the very landscape is the
Chateau De Necker. This was the home of Madame De Stael and the place
where so many refugees sought safety.

"Coppet is Hell in motion," said Napoleon. "The woman who lives there has
a petticoat full of arrows that could hit a man were he seated on a
rainbow. She combines in her active head and strong heart Rousseau and
Mirabeau; and then shields herself behind a shift and screams if you
approach. To attract attention to herself she calls, 'Help, help!'"

The man who voiced these words was surely fit rival to the chatelaine of
this vine-covered place of peace that lies smiling an ironical smile in
the sunshine on yonder hillside.

Coppet bristles with history.

Could Coppet speak it must tell of Voltaire and Rousseau, who had knocked
at its gates; of John Calvin; of Montmorency; of Hautville (for whom
Victor Hugo named a chateau); of Fanny Burney and Madame Recamier and
Girardin (pupil of Rousseau); and Lafayette and hosts of others who are to
us but names, but who in their day were greatest among all the sons of
men.

Chief of all was the great Necker, who himself planned and built the main
edifice that his daughter "might ever call it home." Little did he know
that it would serve as her prison, and that from here she would have to
steal away in disguise. But yet it was the place she called home for full
two decades. Here she wrote and wept and laughed and sang: hating the
place when here, loving it when away. Here she came when De Stael had
died, and here she brought her children. Here she received the caresses of
Benjamin Constant, and here she won the love of pale, handsome Rocco, and
here, "when past age," gave birth to his child. Here and in Paris, in
quick turn, the tragedy and comedy of her life were played; and here she
sleeps.

In the tourist season there are many visitors at the chateau. A grave old
soldier, wearing on his breast the Cross of the Legion of Honor, meets you
at the lodge and conducts you through the halls, the salon and the
library. There are many family portraits, and mementos without number, to
bring back the past that is gone forever. Inscribed copies of books from
Goethe and Schiller and Schlegel and Byron are in the cases, and on the
walls are to be seen pictures of Necker, Rocco, De Stael and Albert, the
fi