Berlin was destined to be associated with the greatest, perhaps the most genuine, grief of her life. She left it pleased with her reception, enriched with new friends, new experiences, and new ideas. She had been happier there than six months previously she would have admitted she could ever be again; far happier than at Coppet, which for years past had only been a place where she tarried and amused herself as she could until the moment came for returning to Paris. She had treasured up a wealth of conversation for her father—all kinds of novel and delightful impressions which she felt would be listened to by nobody so appreciatively as by him; and she started for Vienna, there to glean a little more. But she had hardly set foot in Austria when a courier brought her the news that her father was dangerously ill. He was, in truth, dead, and the messenger knew it; but the fact was withheld, to be broken to her later on. She instantly quitted Vienna, where, as she expresses it, “her happiness had ended,” and started homewards. On the road her father’s death was communicated to her. Her grief was overpowering and demonstrative to the last degree. It was not only sorrow that she felt, but an overmastering terror, for it seemed to her that with her father her last moral support had vanished. Henceforward she would bend to the storms of life like a reed. On arriving at Coppet, she sank into a condition that temporarily resembled dementia. The idea that in losing her father her whole existence was irretrievably wrecked from its moorings, and would drift aimlessly in the future, again filled her mind, and this time with greater force. To every remonstrance she only answered, “I have lost my father.” She soon recovered—strangely soon as it seemed to many—her old elasticity and fire, but a curious secret change was wrought in her from the hour of her loss. She showed mystic yearnings, and became even a little superstitious. She invoked her father in her prayers, and nothing deeply agreeable to her ever happened without her saying, “My father has obtained this for me.” One of Necker’s latest acts was to write a letter to Napoleon begging him to rescind the order for Madame de Staël’s exile. Needless to say that the pathetic request had no effect upon the person to whom it was addressed. Domestic sentiment at no time appealed strongly to Napoleon, and at this period he had almost reached his final pitch of unreasoning and arrogant egoism. The murder of the Duc d’Enghien had hardened all his nature, and in preparing to have himself proclaimed Emperor he had kicked away any useless rubbish in the shape of scruples that might still encumber him.