The ground being thus cleared for Madame de Bouffler’s protégé, that energetic lady set to work to obtain from Gustavus a promise not to remove the Baron, now ambassador, from France for a specified long term of years. This assurance that they would not be parted from their daughter having been given to the Neckers, and formally embodied in a clause of the marriage settlement, the document was signed by the King and Queen of France, and several other illustrious personages, and the wedding celebrated on the 14th January, 1776. The first few days after her marriage, Madame de Staël, according to the custom of the time, passed under her father’s roof; and among her letters is a sweet and affectionate one, which she addressed to her mother on the last day of her sojourn with her parents. “Perhaps I have not always acted rightly towards you, Mamma,” she writes. “At this moment, as in that of death, all my deeds are present to my mind, and I fear that I may not leave in you the regret that I desire. But deign to believe that the phantoms of imagination have often fascinated my eyes, and often come between you and me so as to render me unrecognizable. But the very depth of my tenderness makes me feel at this moment that it has always been the same. It is part of my life, and I am entirely shaken and unhinged in this hour of separation from you. To-night … I shall not have in my house the angel that guaranteed it from thunder and fire. I shall not have her who would protect me if I were dying, and would enfold me, before God, with the rays of her sublime soul. I shall not have at every moment news of your health. I foresee regrets at every instant.… I pray that I may be worthy of you. Happiness may come later, at intervals or never. The end of life terminates everything, and you are so sure that there is another life as to leave no doubt in my heart.… Accept, Mamma, my dear Mamma, my profound respect and boundless tenderness.” Perhaps when Madame Necker read this letter she felt in part consoled for the real or fancied pain which her brilliant and unaccountable daughter had given her. And in spite of passing dissensions with her mother, Germaine’s twenty years of girlhood had been essentially happy, for they had been tenderly and watchfully sheltered from blight or harm. CHAPTER IV. NECKER’S SHORT-LIVED TRIUMPH.