in a rage at this, (that
was of no use you will say,) and I turned to Schlegel, and said to him in
German, 'Madame de Stael has made a double mistake--first in her
expectation, and then in her judgment. We Germans expect that Goethe can
shake twenty heroes from his sleeve to astonish the French--but in our
judgment he himself is a hero of a very different sort.' Schlegel is very
wrong not to have informed her better on this. She threw a laurel leaf
that she had been playing with on the ground. I stamped on it, and pushed
it out of the way with my foot, and went off. That was my interview with
the celebrated woman."

But the De Stael is made the heroine of another letter, in which Bettina
give Goethe an account of her presentation to his mother. The ceremony
took place in the apartments of Morris Bethman.

"Your mother--whether out of irony or pride--had decked herself
wonderfully out--but with German fancy, not in French taste; and I must
tell you that, when I saw her with three feathers on her head, swaying
from side to side--red, white, and blue--the French national
colours--which rose from a field of sun-flowers--my heart beat high with
pleasure and expectation. She was rouged with the greatest skill; her
great black eyes fired a thundering volley; about her neck hung the
well-known ornament of the Queen of Prussia; lace of a fine ancestral look
and great beauty--a real family treasure--covered her bosom. And there she
stood, with white _glacee_ gloves;--in one hand an ornamented fan, with
which she set the air in motion; with the other, which was bare, and all
be-ringed with sparkling jewels, she every now and then took a pinch from
the snuff-box with your miniature on the lid--the one with long locks,
powdered, and with the head leant down as if in thought. A number of
dignified old dowagers formed a semicircle in the bedroom of Morris
Bethman; and the assemblage, on a deep-red carpet--a white field in the
middle, on which was worked a leopard--looked very grand and imposing.
Along the walls were ranged tall Indian plants, and the room was dimly
lighted with glass-lamps. Opposite the semicircle stood the bed, on an
estrade raised two steps, also covered with a deep-red carpet, with
candelabra at each side.

"At last came the long-expected visitor through a suite of illuminated
rooms, accompanied Benjamin Constant. She was dressed like Corinne;--a
turban of aurora and orange-coloured silk--a gown of the same, wit