In reading all this, one is forced to the conclusion that a more emotional woman than Madame de Staël never trod the earth. Every human creature, perhaps, has one unsolved, it may be insoluble, riddle in his life—one mystery of feeling which nobody fathoms. More especially is this true of women who live so much in sentiment; and supremely true of a woman like Madame de Staël. That ineffable something in her which nobody seems to have guessed while she was living, of which Byron felt the presence in her without divining the cause, was the passionate and unappeasable desire to be loved. All men who had dealings with her appear to have misunderstood her in so far that they believed her to be more dominated by her head than her heart—instead of understanding that, in her, head and heart were the systole and diastole of a temperament surprisingly forcible but not essentially strong. Or, if they did learn to comprehend her better at last, it was when she was no longer young, and feeling of a certain sort had become, alas! ridiculous. As long as she was entitled to feel and to suffer they made almost a reproach to her of the intellectual superiority which they could not deny, and cast her back upon her own thoughts for happiness. Madame de Krüdener, on one occasion, arrived at the complacent conclusion that Madame de Staël was jealous of her. Not jealous of her beauty and golden locks, which was conceivable, and might have been true, but jealous of her literary fame! _Corinne_ jealous of _Valerie_! It is true that _Corinne_ had not yet seen the light, while _Valerie_ had not only appeared, but had met with great success. So great an authority as St. Beuve pronounces Madame de Krüdener’s novel to be a thing of joy, a work to be read thrice, “in youth, in middle life, and in old age.” But it is possible to have many intellectual qualities, and yet remain at such an immeasurable distance beneath Madame de Staël that nothing but vanity could scale the height. Moreover, Madame de Krüdener’s meaner self had not been a stranger to the immediate and surprising triumph of her work. She was always intriguing, and intrigued to some purpose when her novel was on the eve of publication. She ran about to all the _fournisseurs_ in Paris, asking them for bows _à la Valerie_, caps and gowns _à la Valerie_.