But in the summer of 1801 all this was still in the future, and harmony and wit reigned at Coppet. Sismondi about this time appears on the scene; discreet, observant, serene, reasonable, he conceived for Madame de Staël a friendship which remained moderate in expression and sincere in feeling to the last. He was not as much dazzled by her as many, and saw her failings clearly. Occasionally she even wounded his quiet self-love, and once or twice, when very restless and excited, she offended him. But he was invariably drawn back to her by the spell of her goodness. He appears as a rock of strength amid all the sparkling, moving, changing tide of ideas and feelings that rippled, dashed, recoiled, and returned unceasingly in every hour of the sojourn at Coppet. His steady sense and calm judgment bring out into sharper contrast the unrest of Constant; the flashing splendor of Madame de Staël; the dreamy refinement of Mathieu de Montmorency; the fantastic charm of Madame de Krüdener, and the unfailing grace of the lovely “Juliette.” Bonstetten was yet another visitor at the château. He was called the Swiss Voltaire, was eternally young, and even grew younger and more plastic in mind as the unnoticed years crept over him. He had seen Madame Necker in Paris when she was still unmarried, and reappeared in her daughter’s home at Coppet as gay, as smiling, as vivacious and witty as he had shown himself in the long-vanished salon of Madame de Vermenoux. He laid himself at Madame de Staël’s feet at once, was received by her with her usual gracious warmth, and profited by her keen but generous criticism of his works. Everybody began by gently laughing at Bonstetten’s incurable youthfulness, and ended by adoring him for it. He wanted steadiness of intellectual purpose—a “belfry,” as St. Beuve expresses it; in other words, some central fact of mind round which all his ideas could rally—but he had plenty of insight, and, amid the universal eulogium of Madame de Staël’s powers, seems to have been the first to point out a defect in her which Schiller commented on later. For when writing of her to Frederica Brun, he says: “Her goodness is extreme, and nobody has more intellect; but that which is best in you, in her does not exist. She lacks feeling for art, and sees no beauty except in eloquence and intelligence. She has more practical wisdom than anybody, but uses it more for her friends than herself.”