We now approach an event in Madame de Staël’s life so well known and so often recounted, that it will not be necessary to relate it again in detail. This was the suppression of her _Allemagne_, Napoleon’s crowning act of meanness, and a deed which obtained for Madame de Staël the entire and unquestioning sympathy of every enlightened mind and generous heart. Madame de Staël determined, after some hesitation, to publish the work in Paris, after submitting it in the first instance to the approval of the Imperial Censors. Why she took this unfortunate resolution it is difficult to conceive; for she had been plentifully illuminated with regard to Napoleon’s spite, and even if all her penetration did not enable her to foresee the full lengths to which this would carry him, she might, one would think, have guessed that the censors in Paris would judge her work with the utmost severity. However this may be, she took up her abode near Blois for the sake of correcting the proofs as they issued from the press. She had, before leaving Coppet, caused her passports to be made out for America, in which country she had property, and whither, for the sake of her children she said, she was gradually making up her mind to go. One cannot imagine Madame de Staël in the New World such as it was in those days; and as she entertained the project for a long while, put it off from month to month, and finally abandoned it altogether, it is more than probable that she never liked it sufficiently to have resolved upon it seriously. At Blois she established herself first in the famous Château of Chaumont-sur-Loire, haunted by such various memories as the Cardinal d’Amboise, Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medici, and Nostradamus. But the owner of the house shortly returning, she removed to another mansion at Fossé, the home of a M. de Salaberry. She had addressed a letter to Napoleon in which she presented her work to his notice, craved an interview in very respectful terms, and urged on his notice the advantage which it would be for her sons’ career and her daughter’s eventual marriage (Albertine was then thirteen) if she were allowed to reside again in the neighborhood of Paris. While awaiting the answer to this, she gathered round her a group of her usual friends, among them Madame Récamier, Adrien and Mathieu de Montmorency, Prosper de Barante, and Benjamin Constant. This society amused itself with music (an Italian musician, Albertine’s master, who played the guitar, being of the company), and with a quaint invention named _La petite poste_. This consisted in abolishing conversation and substituting for it little notes, which were passed from one to the other. A very innocent amusement; but either it, or the guitar-playing, or “Corinne’s” famous name made some noise in the neighborhood.