Castles -- France; Touraine (France) -- Description and travel
Ohlenschlager described the _chatelaine_ of Coppet as "living in an
enchanted castle, a queen or a fairy," albeit of rather substantial
proportions, it must be admitted, "her wand being the little green
branch that her servant placed each day by her plate at table." The time
of the Danish poet's visit was that golden period in the life of the
chateau when it was the _rendezvous_ of many of the savants of Germany
and Geneva. Into the charmed circle, at this time, entered Madame
Kruedener, that strangely puzzling combination of priestess and
coquette, whose Greuze face and mystic revelations touched the heart of
an Emperor. Standing in the long salon, which contains many portraits
and souvenirs of the habitues of Coppet, we realized something of the
life of those brilliant days, when the walls echoed to what Bonstettin
called "prodigious outbursts of wit and learning," and upon whose boards
classic dramas and original plays were acted, often very badly, by the
learned guests. Rosalie de Constant wrote that she trembled for her
cousin Benjamin's success in _Mahomet_, which _role_ he accepted with
confidence, while beneath the play at life and love the great tragedy of
a passionate human soul is played on to the end, for this is the period
of storm and stress, of alternate reproaches and caresses, from which
Benjamin Constant escaped finally to the side of his less exacting
Charlotte.
After spending some weeks in the company of a hostess who could converse
half the day and most of the night with no sign of fatigue, it is not
strange that Benjamin Constant sometimes found himself wearied by the
mental activity of Coppet, where "more intellect was dispensed in one
day than in one year in many lands," or that Bonstettin said that after
a visit to the chateau, "One appreciated the conversation of insipid
people who made no demand upon one's intellect." And brilliant as was
that of the hostess, her guests doubtless hailed as a relief from mental
strain occasional days when she became so much absorbed in her writing
that she ceased for a while to converse, and they were free to wander at
will through the beautiful park, or to gather around the Recamier sofa,
still to be seen in one corner of the salon, where the lovely Juliette
held her court.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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