Madame de Staël arrived at Coppet in a condition of despair, which she partially solaced by writing to Madame Récamier and thanking her again and again for the constancy of her friendship. Evidently many of her friends had already dropped away, or she fancied they had. Perhaps she wearied them a little with her lamentations, for one knows that silence was never her forte. But all at once a happy change came over her. Sismondi, writing to the Countess of Albany, mentioned the transformation, and spoke of their friend with admiration for her new-born but to him inexplicable courage. She had given up literary work, and no longer alluded to her afflictions; and yet, in spite of that, her gaiety was great and her conversation as charming and sparkling as ever. Sismondi doubtless considered that Reason—his beloved Reason was at last asserting its sway over “Corinne’s” excitable imagination. He must have been greatly surprised a long time afterwards when he learnt that the magician was Love. Years previously, when Sismondi had himself been in love in his decorous fashion, and had reproached Madame de Staël for a want of sympathy in his trouble—a want which he had not expected in the author of _Delphine_—she said to him: “I have never loved that I have not felt in myself two persons—one who laughed at the other.” But when she made that answer she was young and restless, and, like all great and burning minds, claimed from life a destiny too radiant to be ever realized. Now she was middle-aged; she had drunk of the waters of bitterness and known some of the tragic awakenings of passion; she had experienced an immeasurable sorrow in the loss of her father; she had become familiar to satiety with the triumphs of the world; and was, as she wrote to Madame Récamier, “wearied of suffering.” In short the moment had come when the one imperious cry of her soul was for peace. In such a state of mind what seems ridiculous becomes possible, and the spirit of mocking youth in Madame de Staël, which once could laugh at the passionate half of her nature, was buried with most of her hopes and almost all of her illusions.