Her own merits inspired the wits surrounding her in their turn. A _portrait_ by Guibert described her as a priestess of Apollo, with dark eyes illumined by genius, black, floating curls, and marked features, expressive of a destiny superior to that of most women. This was an ornamental way of saying that Germaine was not beautiful. She was, in fact, very plain, strangely so, considering that she had magnificent eyes, fine shoulders and arms, and abundant hair. What spoilt her was the total want of grace. When talking, she was much too prodigal of grimace and gesture, and, if eloquent and convincing, was also overpowering. She felt too much on every subject, and carried other people’s small stream of platitudes along in the rushing tide of her own emotions, till her hearers were left exhausted and admiring, but also a little resentful. She disconcerted the very persons whom she most revered by only pausing long enough in her talk to grasp their meaning, and feed her own thought with it till that glowed more consumingly than ever, while all the time what _she_ felt, what _they_ felt, and what _she_ imagined that _they_ meant to say was proclaimed in loud, harsh accents, most trying to sensitive nerves. All this time she was busily writing, and her father, who nicknamed her Mademoiselle de Ste. Ecritoire, could not correct the tendency, even by his unceasing raillery. In a comedy entitled _Sophie, ou les Sentiments Secrets_, she scandalized Madame Necker, by selecting for a subject the struggles of a young orphan against the passion inspired in her by her guardian, a married man. To this period belong also _Jane Grey_ and _Montmorency_, both tragedies, and various novelettes. When Germaine was nearing twenty, the question of her marriage came under discussion; and serious consideration was then, for the first time, accorded to a suitor whom her large fortune had long attracted. This was the Baron de Staël Holstein, Secretary to the Swedish Embassy. He seems to have been one of the elegant and amiable diplomatists whom the Courts of Europe in those days turned out by the score. He had wit and good manners, as he had also the golden key of the Court Chamberlain; otherwise, his personality was insignificant in the extreme.