upon a liaison with Napoleon.  She plied him with letters well seasoned with passion, but all to no purpose.  She came to see him at the Rue Chantereine, and was sent away.  She invited him to balls to which he never went.  But she had opportunities given her which were used in forcing herself upon his attention.  At one of these she held him for two hours, and imagining she had made a great impression, she asked him abruptly, “Who was the most superior woman in antiquity, and who is so at the present day?” Napoleon had had enough of her love-making chatter, so snapped out in his quick practical way, “She who has borne the most children.”  The lady’s discomfiture may be imagined.  It was a deadly thrust.

This very same lady, who had tempted the ruler of France without success, made violent love to Benjamin Constant, who was no friend of Napoleon’s at the time.  Her letters to him were passionate, and Napoleon told Gourgaud at St. Helena that she even threatened to kill her son if Benjamin would do what she wished him to.  This fussy female intriguer suggested to Napoleon that if he would give her two million francs she would write anything he wished.  She was immediately packed about her business.

Madame de Stael was not an important personage at all, but she had the power of attracting people to her who, like herself, had grievances to be discussed, and we may without doubt conclude that these gatherings were composed of well-selected intriguers whom she had fixed in her feline eye.  Her great grievance was the First Consul’s, and subsequently the Emperor’s, coldness towards her.  He estimated her at her true value.  He treated her with the courtesy due to a French citizen, but nothing more, and when she misbehaved in his presence, he rebuked her with due consideration for her sex.  When she caused people to talk to him of her, he merely shrugged his shoulders as was his habit, and smiled disdainfully; though occasionally he could not resist the temptation of ridiculing her comic pretensions.  But this human curiosity had power for mischief.

She was not only an intriguer, but, subsequent to her failure in love-making, she developed a literary tyrannicide.  She condescended to patronise the head of the State by causing it to be conveyed to him that her hostility would cease under certain well-defined conditions.  When he became the real Governor of France, Napoleon put a stop to religious persecution, and put the churches into use.  He re-established religion, and by doing so brought under his influence one hundred million Catholics.  This wise policy created strong opposition from a section of the clergy.  Madame de Stael and the friends whom she had whipped up, many of them being the principal generals, were mischievously opposed to it, and brought pressure to bear so that he might be induced to establish the Protestant religion.  Napoleon ignored them all.  He knew he was on the right ground, and that the nation