In the autumn of 1813 _L’Allemagne_ was published. It appeared in London, and straightway caused the greatest ferment known for a long while in the literary world. The circumstances under which it saw the light—the social position, sex, and history of its author—and its own intrinsic merits, combined to make it an event. It is notorious how much Sir James Mackintosh and Byron admired it; and articles concerning it, critical and laudatory, poured from the European press. Goethe admitted that no previous writer had so largely revealed the riches of German literature to the intelligence of an unappreciative generation; and although the great Teutonic race was not fully satisfied with the work at the time, and has since become somewhat captious regarding it, the talent which it displayed has never been called in question. By a sufficiently striking coincidence the publication of _L’Allemagne_ took place in the same month as the battle of Leipzic. Only a brief period then elapsed before Napoleon abdicated, and Madame de Staël, her splendid and triumphant exile terminated, was enabled once more to re-enter the gates of beloved but, alas! humiliated Paris. She was far too patriotic not to entertain saddened feelings on seeing the streets of the capital filled with soldiers in German, Russian and Cossack uniforms; for while rejoicing in the overthrow of Napoleon, she mourned the tarnished glory of the French arms. She was received with the utmost cordiality by Louis XVIII., and her salon quickly became the rallying-ground for all the brightest intellects of France. It is interesting to read that Talleyrand—the supple, silent, time-serving Talleyrand—was among her guests. She forgave him, of course, for his long oblivion of her old claims on his friendship; but not more thoroughly, in all probability, than he forgave himself. To Paris had returned the Abbé de Montesquion, Lally, Tollendal, Lafayette. How changed were the times since the latter had hurried thither to plead, and plead in vain, for his imprisoned King; since the Abbé had waited in disguise on the high road for Madame de Staël to arrive in her carriage and convey him out of France; since Lally, “the fattest of susceptible men,” had brought his eloquence and sensibility to help in enlivening the sylvan glades of Mickleham. Madame Récamier had returned and Constant, at the ripe age of forty-eight and married for the second time, was so in love with her as to resent any allusion to the past which could divert him, even momentarily, from his all-absorbing passion.