She was mistress of a faultless style.  Her command over the resources of her language was despotic.  She could give to French prose an Italian rhythmus.  She had wit and imagination—­a reasoning imagination.  She was erudite.  Probably no woman ever lived better entitled to a high position in literature.  But she never claimed it.  She holds it now only as a collateral result of her defense in the struggle in which her life was the stake, and in which she lost.  She says:  “Never, however, did I feel the smallest temptation to become an author.  I perceived at a very early period that a woman who acquires this title loses far more than she gains.  She forfeits the affections of the male sex, and provokes the criticisms of her own.  If her works be bad, she is ridiculed, and not without reason; if good, her right to them is disputed; or if envy be forced to acknowledge the best part to be her own, her character, her morals, her conduct, and her talents are scrutinized in such a manner that the reputation of her genius is fully counterbalanced by the publicity given to her defects.  Besides, my happiness was my chief concern, and I never saw the public intermeddle with that of any one without marring it....  During twelve years of my life I shared in my husband’s labors as I participated in his repasts, because one was as natural to me as the other.  If any part of his works happened to be quoted in which particular graces of style were discovered, or if a flattering reception was given to any of the academic trifles, which he took a pleasure in transmitting to the learned societies, of which he was a member, I partook of his satisfaction without reminding him that it was my own composition....  If during his administration an occasion occurred for the expression of great and striking truths, I poured forth my whole soul upon the paper, and it was but natural that its effusions should be preferable to the laborious teemings of a secretary’s brain.  I loved my country.  I was an enthusiast in the cause of liberty.  I was unacquainted with any interest or any passions that could enter into competition with that enthusiasm; my language, consequently, could not but be pure and pathetic, as it was that of the heart and of truth....  Why should not a woman act as secretary to her husband without depriving him of any portion of his merit?  It is well known that ministers can not do every thing themselves; and, surely, if the wives of those of the old governments, or even of the new, had been capable of making draughts of letters, of official dispatches, or of proclamations, their time would have been better employed than in intriguing first for one paramour and then for another.”  “An old coxcomb, enamored of himself, and vain of displaying the slender stock of science he has been so long in acquiring, might be in the habit of seeing me ten years together without suspecting that I could do more than cast up a bill or cut out a shirt.”