The hostility between Madame de Staël and Napoleon was inevitable, since not a single point of sympathy existed between them. Her moral superiority, unselfishness, romantic ardor and sincerity, were precisely the qualities for which he would feel contempt, as being incompatible with the singleness of individual purpose, serene indifference to suffering, and calm acceptance of means which are necessary to material success. Madame de Staël was intimately convinced that not only honesty, but every other virtue constituted the best policy. Napoleon treated all such amiable theories as mere sentimentalism. If occasionally sensual from love of excitement, he was essentially passionless, and looked upon women as toys, not as sentient beings. He hated them to have ideas of their own; he liked them to be elegant, graceful and pretty. He was brought into contact with Madame de Staël—a woman overflowing with passion, energy and intellect, large of person, loud of voice, careless in attire. She had generally found her eloquence invincible, and he meant nothing to be invincible but his system. She had every reason to believe in her talent, and proclaimed that belief somewhat obstreperously; while he was disgusted at not being able to differ from her, and at finding that there was still one light which could shine unquenched beside his star. He usually succeeded in repressing people so entirely as to leave alive in them no possibility of protest; but she was, by her nature, irrepressible. It is true that she records having felt suffocated in his presence, but such a feeling could not have endured in her long. A very little familiarity would have transformed it into impatient rebellion. For Napoleon society, with a few exceptions, was composed of dummies, some of them a little more tangible and resisting than others, consequently more difficult to thrust out of the way. The individual had no intrinsic value for him, but was simply a factor in the sum of success. Madame de Staël admired everybody who was clever, loved everybody who was good, pitied everybody who was sorrowful. She detested oppression, and fought against it and conquered, if not materially, at least morally, although sometimes she hardly foresaw when engaging in it how much the fight would cost her. In the beginning of her acquaintance with him Madame de Staël evidently entertained an admiration for Napoleon greater than that which she eventually cared to avow. Bourrienne goes so far as to assert that she was in love with him, and that she wrote him perfervid letters, which he disdainfully threw into the fire. It is not necessary to accept the whole of this story. Bourrienne as a returned _émigré_ can have felt but a meagre sympathy for Madame de Staël, and he probably yielded to the temptation of making his account of her as piquant as possible. But as she never did anything by halves, and always wrote with the most unconventional ardor, it is certain that