On their way they stopped for a few moments at Madame Récamier’s, and there found General Junot, who, like everybody else, was one of Juliette’s admirers. Perhaps to please the latter, he promised to intercede with the despot for her illustrious friend; and he was, as it appears, so far successful that Napoleon accorded permission for Madame de Staël to reside at Dijon. As soon as Madame Récamier received this news she communicated it in a letter to the care of Camille Jordan. But Madame de Staël never received it, having been driven, as she says, by daily admonitions from her gendarme—but as Madame Récamier appeared to think, by her own impatient agitation—away from Paris to Morfontaine. This was the home of Joseph Bonaparte. Probably pitying her state of excitement and misery, he invited her thither to spend a few days. He was just then animated, as far as he dared be, by a spirit of opposition to his mighty brother; and perhaps—who knows?—was kind to Madame de Staël as much for that reason as for any other. In any case, nobody in those days appears to have been profoundly in earnest except Madame de Staël herself. She could not recover either patience or peace. She was wretched at Morfontaine in spite of the kindness of her host and hostess, because surrounded with officers of the Government who had accepted the servitude against which she rebelled. She knew that her father would receive her, but the thought of taking refuge at Coppet again was distasteful to her. She had but just left that place, and to return thither was to resume habits of which she had tired, and to acknowledge herself beaten. Probably she longed for a change; and probably enough, also, she was in that morbid condition of mind in which to do the simplest and most obvious thing is to rob grief of all its luxury. Finally, she decided to crave permission through Joseph to betake herself to Germany, with the distinct assurance that the French Minister there would consider her a foreigner and leave her in peace. Joseph hastened to St. Cloud for the purpose, and Madame de Staël retired to an inn within two leagues of Paris, there to await his reply. At the end of one day, receiving no answer, and fearing (but why?) to attract attention to herself by remaining any longer in one inn, she sought the shelter of another; and is extremely—one cannot really help thinking needlessly—eloquent in describing her anguish during these self-imposed peregrinations. At last Joseph’s letter came. He not only forwarded her the permission to go to Berlin, but added several valuable letters of introduction, and took leave of her in the kindest terms. Accompanied by her children and Benjamin Constant, she started, hating the postillions for their boasted speed, and feeling that every step taken by the horses was a fresh link in the ever-lengthening and indestructible chain of which one end was Paris and the other her heart.