It was shortly after her return to Switzerland that, going to Geneva to spend some little while, she first met Rocca. He was twenty-three, she was forty-five; but that disparity of years did not prevent his conceiving for her a most romantic passion. He was extremely handsome—a fact to which Frederica Brun and Byron alike bear witness, and was further interesting through having been wounded in the war in Spain, and so badly that his health was never restored. He was the son of a Councillor of State in Geneva, and descended from a noble Piedmontese family which had emigrated to Switzerland during the persecution of the Protestants. He had some culture and considerable intelligence; was even something of an author; and, finally, was a splendid horseman. He was wont to ride a magnificent black Andalusian steed, and performed unheard-of feats of jumping and galloping under the windows of the house in Geneva where Madame de Staël was staying. These varied attractions finally proved irresistible to the object of his homage, and before the year 1811 a secret marriage took place. Why it was a secret is one of those mysteries which has never been satisfactorily cleared up. One explanation is that Bonaparte, out of hatred of Madame de Staël, would order Rocca, who, of course, was in the French army, away on service. But if this had been the real reason, it was sufficiently strong to have rendered any further explanation unnecessary. Nevertheless, a very good authority, the authoress of _Coppet et Weimar_, gives two other reasons: one that Madame de Staël would “never have consented to give up the aristocratic name which she had made so illustrious”; the other, that the world would have turned such a marriage into ridicule. In this connection it is worth while to state that Constant has given Madame de Staël’s unwillingness to change her name as a reason why she would not consent to an open marriage with him. The union with Rocca seems to have been a very happy one; but inasmuch as it passed for years in the eyes of everybody for a connection of another nature, there is no doubt that it brought Madame de Staël into some discredit. Many of the guests at Coppet admired Rocca, but Sismondi, for one, disliked him extremely. Sismondi, however, was not unfrequently disposed to be rather severe on Madame de Staël and her guests; he even carped a little at the lovely Juliette. “She (Madame Récamier) has put in a fleeting appearance here,” he wrote in August, 1811. “She is full of kindness and graciousness towards Madame de Staël, and is not less pretty than two years ago, and yet I am glad that she is going; for whenever she is present, all true conversation is destroyed. She always beguiles her neighbor into low-toned _tête-à-tête_ talk. Her small airs and graces weary me, and her intelligence—for she is intelligent—in no way profits the public.”