When Madame de Staël was returning to France, Necker, anxious to have his name erased from the list of the proscribed, drew up a memorial to that effect, which was presented by his daughter to the Government. His request having been unanimously granted, his next step was to endeavor to recover the two millions which he had quixotically left in the public treasury when quitting France on the outbreak of the Revolution. The Government recognized the debt, and offered to pay it out of the confiscated church lands. But to this M. Necker would not consent. He no longer disapproved of the sale of ecclesiastical property, but he did not wish to throw doubt on his perfect impartiality by confounding his interests with his opinions. About this time Madame de Staël’s separation from her husband took place. Her ostensible object was to ensure the safety of her children’s fortune, which was jeopardized by Baron de Staël’s extravagance. Any other reason which may have existed is not of great importance, inasmuch as the Baron, always a shadowy personage, had finally been quite eclipsed by his brilliant wife. He was said to be indifferent to her, but he seems to have been always fairly amiable and very obedient. As it will not be necessary to speak of him again, it may be mentioned here that he died in 1802, and that his last moments were soothed by the ministrations of his wife, who, hearing that he was ill, travelled from Switzerland to France to attend on him, and tried to bring him back with her to Coppet; but he expired on the road at a place called Poligny. Madame de Staël happened to be returning from Coppet to Paris on the 18th Brumaire, when she learnt that her carriage had passed that of her former ally Barras, who was returning to his estate at Grosbois accompanied by gendarmes. The name of “Bonaparte” was on everybody’s lips—the first time, as she remarks, that such a thing had happened since the Revolution. The state of things which she found on entering the capital was of a kind to excite her imagination. Five weeks of intrigue had ripened Napoleon’s opportunity, and the 19th Brumaire dawned on a France exhausted and enslaved. From that moment Madame de Staël’s _rôle_ was marked out for her irrevocably as one of perpetual opposition. At no time inclined to silence, she was, we may be sure, both loud and intrepid in her denunciation of the new tyranny. At first Napoleon appeared disposed to win her over. Joseph Bonaparte, who was her friend and frequented her salon, came to her once with something that sounded like a message. Napoleon had asked why Madame de Staël would not give in her adhesion to his Government. Did she want the two millions to be paid to her father, or residence in Paris accorded him? There should be no difficulty about either. She had only to say what it was she wanted. Madame de Staël’s answer is celebrated: “The question is not what I want, but what I think.”