'A letter from Madame de Staël, from which I gather that, this time, all is really over between us. So be it. It is my own doing. I must steer my course alone, but I must take care not to fetter myself with other ties which would be infinitely less agreeable.' Or again: 'I have lost Madame de Staël, and I shall never recover from the blow.' And the truth was, indeed, that Madame de Staël had ceased to care, and that another had succeeded to Benjamin Constant's place in her heart. His name was Albert de Rocca, and he was a young French officer who had been wounded in the Spanish wars. His personal beauty was such that a Spanish woman, finding him left for dead upon a battle-field, had taken him home with her, and nursed him back to health, saying that it was a pity that such a beautiful young man should die. His age was twenty-three, and Madame de Staël's was forty-five. But the affection that sprang up between them was deep and genuine. 'I will love her,' he said, 'so dearly that she will end by marrying me.' And when she protested that she was old enough to be his mother, he answered that the mention of that word only gave him a further reason for loving her. 'He is fascinated,' Baron de Voght wrote, 'by his relations with Madame de Staël, and the tears of his father cannot induce him to abandon it.' So she married him, though, for reasons of her own, she insisted that the marriage should be kept a secret. It seemed to her that a young husband would make her ridiculous, but that a young lover would not; very possibly she was right according to the moral standard of the age. At any rate her husband posed as her lover, and in that capacity quarrelled with Constant, with whom he nearly fought a duel, and travelled with her to Russia, to Sweden, and to England, and lived with her in Paris and at Coppet. But it was at this period, when her fame was at its zenith, that Madame de Staël wrote: 'Fame is for women only a splendid mourning for happiness.' But the end was drawing near. Madame de Staël had lived all her life at high pressure, and her health was undermined. A lingering illness, of which the fatal issue was foreseen, overtook her. She struggled against it, declaring that she would live for Rocca's sake. But all in vain. She died in Paris in 1817. Rocca himself, who only survived her a few months, was too ill to be with her. Benjamin Constant spent a night of mourning in her death-chamber. They buried her at Coppet amid general lamentations. FOOTNOTES: [5] By the present author in 'Madame de Staël and her Lovers.' [6] It has since been republished separately. [7] Madame de Hardenberg, divorced and remarried. CHAPTER VI THE REVOLUTION