Some spiteful ridicule awaited the young ambassadress on her first entrance into official life, and, strangely enough, among these detractors was Madame de Boufflers herself, who wrote to Gustavus III.: “She has been virtuously brought up, but has no knowledge of the world or its usages … and has a degree of assurance that I never saw equalled at her age, or in any position. If she were less spoilt by the incense offered up to her, I should have tried to give her a little advice.” Another courtier’s soul was vexed because Madame de Staël, when presented on her marriage, tore her flounce, and thus spoilt her third curtsey. As much scandal was caused by this _gaucherie_ as if it had been some newly-invented sin; but the delinquent herself, when the heinousness of her conduct was communicated to her, simply laughed. She could, indeed, afford to despise all such censure, for, if too obstreperously intellectual and ardent for artificial circles, she soon attained to immense influence among all the thinking and quasi-thinking minds of France. Politics were now beginning to be the one absorbing subject whose paramount importance dwarfed every other; and Madame de Staël, always in the vanguard of ideas, threw herself with characteristic enthusiasm into the questions of the day. To talk about the glorious future of humanity was the fashionable cant of the hour, but Madame de Staël really believed in the regeneration about which others affectedly maundered; and at all social gatherings in the Rue Bergère, or at St. Ouen (where her presence was as frequent as of yore), she held forth on this subject to the crowd of dazzled listeners, whom she partially convinced and wholly overpowered.