her first sentiments towards the conqueror of Italy were expressed in a form to weary rather than gratify him. She presumably praised him for views which he did not hold, and for a disinterestedness that he was far from feeling. He must have understood that to an intellect such as hers, the first shock of disappointment would bring enlightenment, and then his schemes would be penetrated before they were ripe for execution. Add to all these elements of antipathy the fact that every intelligent man in Paris would find his way to Madame de Staël’s salon, with the further fact that she herself was not to be silenced, and it becomes easy to understand how Bonaparte could condescend from his greatness to hate her. His aversion, owing to his Italian blood, had a strain of Pulcinello-like malignity, and every fresh outbreak of clamor from his victim only roused him to strike harder. That he should exile her in the first instance was not only comprehensible but justifiable. He had undertaken a gigantic task, that of accomplishing by the single force of his own will, and in the brief space of his own life-time, what, in the natural course of events, would have required the slow action of generations. That is, he sought to weld into his own system the mobile, alert, and impressionable mind of France. To crush a thing so impalpable, to extinguish a thing so fiery, was an impossible undertaking, and to anybody but Napoleon it must have seemed so. He, at least, so far understood its magnitude as to appreciate the full danger of even a momentary reaction. And what, in that sombre but electric atmosphere, charged with suppressed fire, was so likely to provoke a reaction as the influence of Madame de Staël—a woman of amazing talent, of high position and great wealth; notoriously disinterested, and, although ever true to her principles, yet strongly swayed by personal influences. Moreover, she represented the Opposition. Let anybody consider what public opinion is, even in well-ordered England, how it reverses in a moment the best laid plans of Ministers, and it becomes easy to understand how in revolutionary France, a new thought emanating from Madame de Staël’s salon could prove gravely dangerous to Napoleon. In exiling her he only treated her as she had been treated already. If he found her in France on coming to power, it was because she had been reconciled to the Directory; but there never was the least chance of her becoming reconciled to him. There are several very womanly touches in Madame de Staël’s own account of her relations with Napoleon. Here is one of them, relating apparently to a time when the aversion between the First Consul and his illustrious foe had become an accomplished but not an acknowledged fact. Madame de Staël was invited to General Berthier’s one evening when it was known that Napoleon would be present.