‘I have much admired Mme. de Staël; I still admire her, and I strongly suspect that the author of the _Dialogue sur l’enthousiasme_ wanted to paint me in the character of Cleon.’ The prince, when uttering those last words, glanced at me smiling. ‘She felt much vexed at some one daring to question merit which at that time everybody agreed in pronouncing incontestable. That little bit of criticism was the first. The author particularly censures her novel _Corinne_. In that respect he was wrong. Wishing to attack her, he had no business to attack her writings. That, assuredly, was not her vulnerable side. But he would have been justified in blaming the pretension to refer everything to herself, the inconstancy of opinion which was so dangerous to her friends who took her at her word, the pedagogic and biting tone, the histrionic elation, in the manner of Corinne, her neologism in intellectual matters, which was so utterly antipathetic to me, and the craving to appear on the boards, where she displayed not the slightest talent, inasmuch as her true vocation lay in acting in real life. On all those points he would have been justified in venting his spite either in prose or in verse. You are aware that we were within an ace of falling out for ever in consequence of a spiteful remark which was told to her as coming from me. After the performance of her tragedy, _Agar dans le Désert_, in which, to be frank, she seemed more ugly than usual, some one, who was not the Prince de Ligne, is reported to have said that the proper title of the piece ought to have been _La Justification d’Abraham_. She sulked for a long time, and I had much difficulty in convincing her of my innocence.’ After that the prince showed me a small manuscript, which has been published since, and which he had then just finished. Its subject was the Venetian Casanova. When that famous adventurer was tired of hawking about Europe his projects, his magic secrets, and his striking personality; when, in fact, he felt old age creeping over him and poverty staring him in the face, he applied to the Prince de Ligne. Almost as a matter of course, the latter made him welcome, bestirred himself on his behalf, and got him the post of librarian to his nephew, the Prince de Wallstein. Casanova’s curiously chequered career appealed to the imagination of the old marshal. He also had had many adventures during his existence. He liked the ready and biting wit of the Venetian, his profound and varied learning, and his philosophically-turned and ever fresh comments.