The day we set out from Pregny we breakfasted at Coppet; from some misunderstanding M. de Staël had not expected us and had breakfasted, but as he is remarkably well-bred, easy, and obliging in his manners he was not _put out_, and while our breakfast was preparing he showed us the house. All the rooms once inhabited by Madame de Staël we could not think of as common rooms--they have a classical power over the mind, and this was much heightened by the strong attachment and respect for her memory shown in every word and look, and _silence_ by her son and by her friend, Miss Randall. He is correcting for the press _Les dix Années d'Exil._ M. de Staël after breakfast took us a delightful walk through the grounds, which he is improving with good taste and judgment. He told me that his mother never gave any work to the public in the form in which she originally composed it; she changed the arrangement and expression of her thoughts with such facility, and was so little attached to her own first views of the subject that often a work was completely remodelled by her while passing through the press. Her father disliked to see her make any formal preparation for writing when she was young, so that she used to write often on the corner of the chimney-piece, or on a pasteboard held in her hand, and always in the room with others, for her father could not bear her to be out of the room--and this habit of writing without preparation she preserved ever afterwards. M. de Staël told me of a curious interview he had with Buonaparte when he was enraged with his mother, who had published remarks on his government--concluding with "Eh! bien vous avez raison aussi. Je conçois qu'un fils doit toujours faire la defense de sa mère, mais enfin, si Monsieur veut écrire des libelles, il faut aller en Angleterre. Ou bien, s'il cherche la gloire, c'est en Angleterre qu'il faut aller. C'est l'Angleterre, ou la France--il n'y a que ces deux pays en Europe--dans le monde." Before any one else at Paris, Miss Randall told me, had the _MS. de Sainte-Hélène_, a copy had been sent to the Duke of Wellington, who lent it to Madame de Staël; she began to read it eagerly, and when she had read about half, she stopped and exclaimed, "Where is Benjamin Constant? we will wait for him." When he came, she began to give him an account of what they had been reading; he listened with the indifference of a person who had already seen the book, and when she urged him to read up to them, he said he would go on where they were. When it was criticised, he defended it, or writhed under it as if the attack was personal. When accused of being the author, he denied it with vehemence, and Miss Randall said to him, "If you had simply denied it I might have believed you, but when you come to swearing, I am sure that you are the author."