Recamier acted the Aricie to Mme. de Stael's Phedre. This life that seems to us so fascinating, has been described too often to need repetition. It had its tumultuous elements, its passionate undercurrents, its romantic episodes. But in spite of its attractions Mme. de Stael fretted under the peaceful shades of Coppet. Its limited horizon pressed upon her. The silence of the snowcapped mountains chilled her. She looked upon their solitary grandeur with "magnificent horror." The repose of nature was an "infernal peace" which plunged her into gloomier depths of ennui and despair. To some one who was admiring the beauties of Lake Leman she replied; "I should like better the gutters of the Rue du Bac." It was people, always people, who interested her. "French conversation exists only in Paris," she said, "and conversation has been from infancy my greatest pleasure." Restlessly she sought distraction in travel, but wherever she went the iron hand pressed upon her still. Italy fostered her melancholy. She loved its ruins, which her imagination draped with the fading colors of the past and associated with the desolation of a living soul. But its exquisite variety of landscape and color does not seem to have touched her. "If it were not for the world's opinion," she said, "I would not open my window to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, but I would travel five hundred leagues to talk with a clever man whom I have not met." Germany gave her infinite food for thought, but her "astonishing volubility," her "incessant movement," her constant desire to know, to discuss, to penetrate all things wearied the moderate Germans, as it had already wearied the serious English. "Tell me, Monsieur Fichte," she said one day, "could you in a short time, a quarter of an hour for example, give me a glimpse of your system and explain what you understand by your ME; I find it very obscure." The philosopher was amazed at what he thought her impertinence, but made the attempt through an interpreter. At the end of ten minutes she exclaimed, "That is sufficient, Monsieur Fichte.
That is quite sufficient. I comprehend you perfectly. I have seen your system in illustration. It is one of the adventures of Baron Munchhausen." "We are in perpetual mental tension," said the wife of Schiller. Even Schiller himself grew tired. "It seems as if I were relieved of a malady," he said, when she left.
It was this excess of vivacity and her abounding sensibility that constituted at once her fascination and her misfortune. Her beliefs were enthusiasms. Her friendships were passions. "No one has carried the religion of friendship so far as myself," she said. To love, to be loved was the supreme need of her soul; but her love was a flame that irradiated her intellect and added brilliancy to the life it consumed. She paints in "Corinne" the passions, the struggles, the penalties, and the sorrows of a woman of genius. It is a life she had known, a life of which she had tasted the sweetest delights and experienced the most cruel disenchantments. "Corinne" at the Capitol, "Corinne" thinking, analyzing, loving, suffering, triumphing, wearing a crown of laurel upon her head and an invisible crown of thorns upon her heart--it is Mme. de Stael self-revealed by the light of her own imagination.
It was in a moment of weakness and weariness, when her idols had one after another been shattered, and all the pleasant vistas of her youth seemed shut out forever, that she met M. de Rocca, a wounded officer of good family, but of little more than half her years, whose gentle, chivalric character commanded her admiration, whose suffering touched her pity, and whose devotion won her affection. "I will love her so much that she will end by marrying me," he said, and the result proved his penetration.
This marriage, which was a secret one, has shadowed a little the brilliancy of her fame, but if it was a weakness to bend from her high altitude, it was not a sin, though more creditable to her heart than to her worldly wisdom. At all events it brought into her life a new element of repose, and gave her a tender consolation in her closing years.
When at last the relentless autocrat of France found his rock- bound limits, and she was free to return to the spot which had been the goal of all her dreams, it was too late. Her health was broken. It is true her friends rallied around her, and her salon, opened once more, retook a little of its ancient glory.
