When the Consulate was established, Mme de Staël's salon empire was watched by the rising influence of the day with a jealous eye. It was certainly a turbulent scene. Very bitter were the complaints of the men of the Revolution. They had risked so much; they had fought so courageously for liberty! They saw the disorders of the time, but they could not bear to lose all the fruits of their toil; and Garat and Andrieux, Daunon and Benjamin Constant, urged on by the eloquence of Mme de Staël, framed powerful appeals on these occasions for the morrow. Bonaparte could not tolerate this. His power was too recently gained--his projects too unripe. In vain did the friends of Mme de Staël say, that a _salon_ could never be dangerous to a rule like his. 'It is not a salon,' said he; 'it is a club.' It was, in fact, the antagonism between mind and physical force. The First Consul had said before, of the orators of the Tribune: 'I have no time to answer these refractory speechifiers: they _do_ nothing but perplex all things; they must be silenced.' And one great point of attack was Mme de Staël's salon. It was necessary she should abdicate her throne. A sentence of banishment condemned the brilliant lady to lay down the sceptre. Exiled to Geneva, surrounded by friends, sharing her father's lot, occupied with her daughter's education, she had, it may be thought, plenty of objects: she was unquestionably the first literary woman in Europe, too, and as such, Geneva was as her salon, where she received the homage of royalty and talent. Yet, a true Frenchwoman, unable to bear separation from the peculiar atmosphere in which she had been reared, she pined after it--pined still more for the friends who visited her only to be partakers of her exile; and so she passed the whole period of the Napoleon dynasty.