[4] Napoleon, at St. Helena, gave the following graphic and most discriminating sketch of the character of Madame de Staël. "She was a woman of considerable talent and great ambition; but so extremely intriguing and restless, as to give rise to the observation, that she would throw her friends into the sea, that, at the moment of drowning, she might have an opportunity of saving them. Shortly after my return from the conquest of Italy, I was accosted by her in a large company, though at that time I avoided going out much in public. She followed me every where, and stuck so close that I could not shake her off. At last she asked me, 'Who is at this moment the first woman in the world?' intending to pay a compliment to me, and thinking that I would return it. I looked at her, and replied, 'She, madame, who has borne the greatest number of children,' an answer which greatly confused her." From this hour she became the unrelenting enemy of Napoleon. [5] "Few persons," said Mirabeau, "comprehend the power of my ugliness." "If you would form an idea of my looks," he wrote to a lady who had never seen him, "you must imagine a tiger who has had the small-pox." "The life of Mirabeau," says Sydney Smith, "should embrace all the talents and all the vices, every merit and every defect, every glory and every disgrace. He was student, voluptuary, soldier, prisoner, author, diplomatist, exile, pauper, courtier, democrat, orator, statesman, traitor. He has seen more, suffered more, learned more, felt more, done more, than any man of his own or any other age." [6] Talleyrand, one of the most distinguished diplomatists, was afterward elevated by the Emperor Napoleon to be Grand Chamberlain of the Empire. He was celebrated for his witticisms. One day Mirabeau was recounting the qualities which, in those difficult times, one should possess to be minister of state. He was evidently describing his own character, when, to the great mirth of all present, Talleyrand archly interrupted him with the inquiry, "_He should also be pitted with the small-pox, should he not?_"