Coppet. Its limited
horizon pressed upon her. The silence of the snowcapped mountains
chilled her. She looked upon their solitary grandeur with "magnificent
horror." The repose of nature was an "infernal peace" which plunged her
into gloomier depths of ennui and despair. To some one who was admiring
the beauties of Lake Leman she replied; "I should like better the
gutters of the Rue du Bac." It was people, always people, who interested
her. "French conversation exists only in Paris," she said, "and
conversation has been from infancy my greatest pleasure." Restlessly
she sought distraction in travel, but wherever she went the iron hand
pressed upon her still. Italy fostered her melancholy. She loved its
ruins, which her imagination draped with the fading colors of the past
and associated with the desolation of a living soul. But its exquisite
variety of landscape and color does not seem to have touched her. "If it
were not for the world's opinion," she said, "I would not open my window
to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, but I would travel five
hundred leagues to talk with a clever man whom I have not met." Germany
gave her infinite food for thought, but her "astonishing volubility,"
her "incessant movement," her constant desire to know, to discuss, to
penetrate all things wearied the moderate Germans, as it had already
wearied the serious English. "Tell me, Monsieur Fichte," she said one
day, "could you in a short time, a quarter of an hour for example, give
me a glimpse of your system and explain what you understand by your ME;
I find it very obscure." The philosopher was amazed at what he thought
her impertinence, but made the attempt through an interpreter. At the
end of ten minutes she exclaimed, "That is sufficient, Monsieur Fichte.
That is quite sufficient. I comprehend you perfectly. I have seen
your system in illustration. It is one of the adventures of Baron
Munchhausen." "We are in perpetual mental tension," said the wife of
Schiller. Even Schiller himself grew tired. "It seems as if I were
relieved of a malady," he said, when she left.

It was this excess of vivacity and her abounding sensibility that
constituted at once her fascination and her misfortune. Her beliefs
were enthusiasms. Her friendships were passions. "No one has carried the
religion of friendship so far as myself," she said. To love, to be
loved was the supreme need of her soul; but her love was a flame that
irradiated her intellect