Castles -- France; Touraine (France) -- Description and travel
The love affairs of the Swiss pastor's daughter, her disappointments,
her triumphs, and her facility for turning from lost Edens to pastures
new, would be of little interest to-day did they not reveal certain
common characteristics possessed by the lively blue-stocking, Susanne
Curchod, and her passionate, intense daughter, Anne Germaine de Stael.
The well-conducted Madame Necker, whose fair name was touched by no
breath of scandal, possessed all her life a craving for love, devotion,
and admiration, which were accorded to her in full measure. With the
mother, passion was restrained by fine delicacy and reserve, and her
heart was satisfied by a congenial marriage, while the impetuous and
ill-regulated nature of Germaine was thrown back upon itself by an early
and singularly ill-assorted union.
With many thoughts of the two interesting women who once lived in the
chateau we passed through the doorway into the hall, on whose right-hand
side is a colossal statue of Louis Seize, while on the left are
portraits of several generations of d'Haussonvilles. On the stairway are
numerous genealogical charts and family trees of the Neckers, doubtless
reaching back to Attila, if not to Adam, for strange as it may seem the
great Swiss financier was as much addicted to vain genealogies and
heraldic quarterings as a twentieth century American.
It was in the long library, with its many windows opening out upon a
sunny terrace, that we came upon traces of the presiding genius of the
chateau. Here are Madame de Stael's own books, the cases unchanged, we
were assured, except by the addition of new publications from time to
time. On a table, among the most treasured possessions of the devoted
daughter, is the strong box of M. Necker in which he kept his accounts
with the French Government when he sought to stem the tide of financial
disaster that was bearing the monarchy to its doom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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