lying words.  But she no sooner saw him than she was repelled, especially when she knew he had trampled on the liberties which he had professed to defend.  Her instincts penetrated through all the plaudits of his idolaters.  She felt that he was a traitor to a great cause,—­was heartless, unboundedly ambitious, insufferably egotistic, a self-worshipper, who would brush away everything and everybody that stood in his way; and she hated him, and she defied him, and her house became the centre of opposition, the headquarters of enmity and wrath.  What was his glory, as a conqueror, compared with the cause she loved, trodden under foot by an iron, rigid, jealous, irresistible despotism?  Nor did Napoleon like her any better than she liked him,—­not that he was envious, but because she stood in his way.  He expected universal homage and devotion, neither of which would she give him.  He was exceedingly irritated at the reports of her bitter sayings, blended with ridicule and sarcasm.  He was not merely annoyed, he was afraid.  “Her arrows,” said he, “would hit a man if he were seated on a rainbow.”  And when he found he could not silence her, he banished her to within forty leagues of Paris.  He was not naturally cruel, but he was not the man to allow so bright a woman to say her sharp things about him to his generals and courtiers.  It was not the worst thing he ever did to banish his greatest enemy; but it was mean and cruel to persecute her as he did after she was banished.

So from Paris—­to her the “hub of the universe”—­Madame de Stael, “with wandering steps and slow, took her solitary way.”  Expelled from the Eden she loved, she sought to find some place where she could enjoy society,—­which was the passion of her life.  Weimar, in Germany, then contained a constellation of illustrious men, over whom Goethe reigned, as Dr. Johnson once did in London.  Thither she resolved to go, after a brief stay at Coppet, her place in Switzerland; and her ten years’ exile began with a sojourn among the brightest intellects of Germany.  She was cordially received at Weimar, especially by the Court, although the dictator of German literature did not like her much.  She was too impetuous, impulsive, and masculine for him.  Schiller and Wieland and Schlegel liked her better, and understood her better.  Her great works had not then been written, and she had reputation chiefly for her high social position and social qualities.  Possibly her exceeding vivacity and wit seemed superficial,—­as witty French people then seemed to both Germans and English.  Doubtless there were critics and philosophers in Germany who were not capable of appreciating a person who aspired to penetrate all the secrets of art, philosophy, religion, and science then known who tried to master everything, and who talked eloquently on everything,—­and that person a woman, and a Frenchwoman.  Goethe was indeed an exception to most German critics, for he was an artist, as few Germans have been in the