and added brilliancy to the life it consumed.
She paints in "Corinne" the passions, the struggles, the penalties, and
the sorrows of a woman of genius. It is a life she had known, a life
of which she had tasted the sweetest delights and experienced the most
cruel disenchantments. "Corinne" at the Capitol, "Corinne" thinking,
analyzing, loving, suffering, triumphing, wearing a crown of laurel upon
her head and an invisible crown of thorns upon her heart--it is Mme. de
Stael self-revealed by the light of her own imagination.

It was in a moment of weakness and weariness, when her idols had one
after another been shattered, and all the pleasant vistas of her youth
seemed shut out forever, that she met M. de Rocca, a wounded officer
of good family, but of little more than half her years, whose gentle,
chivalric character commanded her admiration, whose suffering touched
her pity, and whose devotion won her affection. "I will love her so much
that she will end by marrying me," he said, and the result proved his
penetration. This marriage, which was a secret one, has shadowed a
little the brilliancy of her fame, but if it was a weakness to bend from
her high altitude, it was not a sin, though more creditable to her heart
than to her worldly wisdom. At all events it brought into her life a
new element of repose, and gave her a tender consolation in her closing
years.

When at last the relentless autocrat of France found his rock-bound
limits, and she was free to return to the spot which had been the goal
of all her dreams, it was too late. Her health was broken. It is true
her friends rallied around her, and her salon, opened once more, retook
a little of its ancient glory. Few celebrities who came to Paris failed
to seek the drawing room of Mme. de Stael, which was still illuminated
with the brilliancy of her genius and the splendor of her fame. But her
triumphs were past, and life was receding. Her few remaining days of
weakness and suffering, darkened by vain regrets, were passed more and
more in the warmth and tenderness of her devoted family, in the noble
and elevated thought that rose above the strife of politics into the
serene atmosphere of a Christian faith. At her death bed Chateaubriand
did her tardy justice. "Bon jour, my dear Francis; I suffer, but that
does not prevent me from loving you," she said to one who had been her
critic, but never her friend. Her magnanimity was as unfailing as her
generosity, and it ma