int at genius.
There was about him an air of fatigue and laboriousness which suggested
the hard-working and successful business man rather than a great
statesman and financier, and the courtly richness of his embroidered
velvet dress suited ill his commonplace figure. In his whole personality
Calvert decided there was no suggestion of that nobility of mind and
nature which so distinguished Mr. Jefferson, nor of that keen mentality
and easy elegance of manner so characteristic of Mr. Gouverneur Morris.

"His looks seem to say, 'I am the man,'" whispered that gentleman to
Calvert as Monsieur Necker turned aside for an instant to speak with Mr.
Jefferson, and Calvert could not help smiling at the humorous and swift
summing-up of the Minister's character and the merry twinkle in Mr.
Morris's eye. But whatever their opinion of his talents, Monsieur
Necker's cordiality was above reproach, and it was with elaborate
politeness that he presented the Americans to Madame Necker. She was a
very handsome woman still, retaining traces of that beauty which had
fired Gibbon in his youth, and was all amiability to the two strangers,
whom she introduced to her daughter, Madame la Baronne de
Stael-Holstein, wife of the ambassador from Gustavus III. to the court
of Louis XVI.

Madame de Stael stood with her back to the open fire, her hands clasped
behind her, her brilliant black eyes flashing upon the assembled
company. Although she had accomplished nothing great ('twas before she
wrote "Corinne" or "De l'Allemagne"), she was already famous for her
appreciation of Monsieur Rousseau. Indeed, there was something so
unusual, so forceful in this large, almost masculine woman, that
Calvert was as much impressed with her as he had been disappointed in
Monsieur Necker. It seemed as if the mediocre talents of the Minister of
Finance had flamed into genius in this leonine creature who was as much
her mother's inferior in looks as her father's superior in intelligence.
Mingled with this masculinity of mind and appearance was an egotism, a
coquetry, a directness of thought and action that combined to make a
curious personality. It was amusing to note with what assiduity she
showered her attentions on Mr. Morris, the man of the world, of whom she
had heard much, and with what polite indifference she dismissed
Calvert--though it is but doing her justice to say that later, tiring of
her ineffectual efforts to interest Mr. Morris, she made the amende
h