d
finely poised head seemed to respond to the rhythmic flow of thoughts
that were emphasized by the graceful gestures of an exquisitely molded
hand, in which she usually held a sprig of laurel. "If I were queen,"
said Mme. de Tesse, "I would order Mme. de Stael to talk to me always."

But this center in which the more thoughtful spirits of the old regime
met the brilliant and active leaders of the new was broken up by the
storm which swept away so many of its leaders, and Mme. de Stael, after
lingering in the face of dangers to save her friends, barely escaped
with her life on the eve of the September massacres of 1792. "She is an
excellent woman," said one of her contemporaries, "who drowns all her
friends in order to have the pleasure of angling for them."

Mme. de Stael resumed her place and organized her salon anew in 1795.
But it was her fate to live always in an atmosphere surcharged with
storms. She was too republican for the aristocrats, and too aristocratic
for the republicans. Distrusted by both parties and feared by the
Directoire, she found it advisable after a few months to retire to
Coppet. Less than two years later she was again in Paris. Her friends
were then in power, notably Talleyrand. "If I remain here another year
I shall die," he had written her from America, and she had generously
secured the repeal of the decree that exiled him, a kindness which
he promptly forgot. Though her enthusiasm for the republic was much
moderated, and though she had been so far dazzled by the genius of
Napoleon as to hail him as a restorer of order, her illusions regarding
him were very short-lived. She had no sympathy with his aims at personal
power. Her drawing room soon became the rallying point for his enemies
and the center of a powerful opposition. But she had a natural love for
all forms of intellectual distinction, and her genius and fame still
attracted a circle more or less cosmopolitan. Ministers of state and
editors of leading journals were among her guests. Joseph and Lucien
Bonaparte were her devoted friends. The small remnant of the noblesse
that had any inclination to return to a world which had lost its
charm for them found there a trace of the old politeness. Mathieu de
Montmorency, devout and charitable; his brother Adrien, delicate in
spirit and gentle in manners; Narbonne, still devoted and diplomatic,
and the Chevalier de Boufflers, gay, witty, and brilliant, were of those
who brought into it somet