the moment, all party spirit, all political hatred; the assembled people granted all he asked with transport. Madame de Staël and her mother accompanied him. "Oh! nothing," she writes, "can equal the emotion that a woman feels when she has the happiness of hearing the name of one beloved repeated by a whole people. All those faces, which appear for the time animated by the same sentiment as one's self; those innumerable voices, which echo to the heart the name that rises in the air, and which appears to return from heaven after having received the homage of earth; the inconceivable electricity which men communicate to each other when they share the same emotions; all those mysteries of nature and social feeling are added to the greatest mystery of all--love--filial or maternal, but still love; and the soul sinks under emotions stronger than itself. When I came to myself, I felt that I had reached the extreme boundary of happiness." She had reached it, and the recoil soon came. The popular party, each hour rising in power, disdained the half measures and weak concessions of the minister:--from that hour, in spite of his feeble, though virtuous, endeavours to restrain popular violence, and, at the same time, to supply the wants of the people, and mitigate their sufferings by great and unwearied exertions and personal sacrifices, the popularity of Necker declined. His propositions were weak and inconsistent; the king had no confidence in him; the people withdrew their favour. His daughter could not perceive that his want of energy, and total incapacity to cope with the necessities of the times, were the occasion of this change; she saw only ingratitude, perversity, and ignorance. Her father still continued, in her eyes, the first of men; when he triumphed he was a hero, when he fell he was a martyr.