One evening, in the year 1790, there was a very brilliant party in the drawing-rooms of M. Neckar, the celebrated financier. The Bastile had just been demolished. The people, exulting in newly found power, and dimly discerning long-defrauded rights, were trampling beneath their feet, indiscriminately, all institutions, good and bad, upon which ages had left their sanction. The gay and fickle Parisians, notwithstanding the portentous approachings of a storm, the most fearful earth has ever witnessed, were pleased with change, and with reckless curiosity awaited the result of the appalling phenomenon exhibited around them. Many of the higher nobility, terrified at the violence, daily growing more resistless and extended, had sought personal safety in emigration. The tone of society in the metropolis had, however, become decidedly improved by the greater commingling, in all the large parties, of men eminent in talents and in public services, as well as of those illustrious in rank. The entertainments given by M. Neckar, embellished by the presence, as the presiding genius, of his distinguished daughter, Madame de Staël,[4] were brilliant in the extreme, assembling all the noted gentlemen and ladies of the metropolis. On the occasion to which we refer, the magnificent saloon was filled with men who had attained the highest eminence in literature and science, or who, in those troubled times, had ascended to posts of influence and honor in the state. Mirabeau was there,[5] with his lofty brow and thunder tones, proud of his very ugliness. Talleyrand[6] moved majestically through the halls, conspicuous for his gigantic proportions and courtly bearing. La Fayette, rendered glorious as the friend of Washington and his companion in arms, had gathered around him a group of congenial spirits. In the embrasure of a window sat Madame de Staël. By the brilliance of her conversational powers she had attracted to her side St. Just, who afterward obtained such sanguinary notoriety; Malesherbes, the eloquent and intrepid advocate of royalty; Lalande, the venerable astronomer; Marmontel and Lagrange, illustrious mathematicians, and others, whose fame was circulating through Europe.