Madame de Staël appears simply to have overwhelmed him; and the effect which he produced on her was not less startling. Her salon was the rallying-ground of contradictory individualities. She believed in those days that she could reconcile Irreconcilables, and she welcomed Conventionnels like Chénier and Roederer, stranded “survivals” of a vanished epoch like Suard, Morellet and Laharpe; and aristocrats, some of them altogether soured and worn out, like Castellane, Choiseul and Narbonne. Into this political menagerie Constant fell like a spirit from another world. Applauding the Revolution, yet having played no part in it, he was its virgin knight. There was something strange and attractive also in his appearance; a certain awkwardness in figure and gesture joined to a handsome, clever, young face and long, fair hair. Just at that moment (1795) the predominant tendency in Madame de Staël’s salon was hostile to the Government. She professed herself already to be converted to Republicanism, and probably was so in theory, but she had not yet overcome her aversion to the real revolutionaries. Either directly through her influence or with her tacit consent, Constant was induced to publish three letters protesting against the admission of two thirds of the old Convention into the new body of Representatives. The success which followed was prodigious. All the women of the Royalist party flattered and caressed him, and all the journalists extolled him to the skies. Constant, however, was not the man to bear that kind of petting long, he required excitement with some keener edge to it, and was, moreover, too logical, too naturally enlightened and liberal to endorse reactionary platitudes. He hastened to disavow the letters, and although he did not find it easy to disabuse the public mind of its first impression, he was careful not to deepen this by any further mistakes. During the following four years his intimacy with Madame de Staël flourished and grew apace. They acted and reacted upon one another by the law of their opposing natures. His ardor was as uncertain as hers was steady; but whenever he caught fresh fire, it came from her. On the other hand, the tormenting kind of cruelty which belonged to his cynical caprice seems to have cast a spell over Madame de Staël’s own warm and frank simplicity which she found it difficult to break. To Constant, at this time, belongs the merit of having appreciated her thoroughly and defended her warmly—if not invariably, at any rate in his truer moments. On his very first meeting with her, which was in Switzerland, she enthralled him instantaneously; perhaps all the more so that, like most people, he had been prejudiced against her by hearsay. He wrote to Madame de Charrière, who seems to have felt and expressed some bitterness regarding his new acquaintance, that she should get rid of the idea that Madame de Staël was nothing more than a “talking machine.”