The Jacobin party, with the exception of Robespierre, clamoured loudly for war:  his fanaticism deceived him as to his weakness.  War was to these men an armed apostleship, which was about to propagate their social philosophy over the universe.  The first cannon shot fired in the name of the rights of man would shake thrones to their centre.  Then there was finally a third party which hoped for war, that of the constitutional moderes, which flattered itself that it would restore sound energy to the executive power, by the necessity of concentrating the military authority in the hands of the king at the moment when the nationality should be menaced.  All extremity of war places the dictatorship in the hands of the party which makes it, and they hoped, on behalf of the king, and of themselves, for this dictatorship of necessity.

XIX.

A young, but already influential, female had lent to this latter party the prestige of her youth, her genius, and her enthusiasm—­it was Madame de Staeel.  Necker’s daughter, she had inspired politics from her birth.  Her mother’s salon had been the coenaculum of the philosophy of the 18th century.  Voltaire, Rousseau, Buffon, D’Alembert, Diderot, Raynal, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, Condorcet had played with this child, and fostered her earliest ideas.  Her cradle was that of the Revolution.  Her father’s popularity had played about her lips, and left there an inextinguishable thirst for fame.  She sought it in the storms of the populace, in calumny, and death.  Her genius was great, her soul pure, her heart deeply impassioned.  A man in her energy, a woman in her tenderness, that the ideal of her ambition should be satisfied, it was necessary for her to associate in the same character genius, glory, and love.

Nature, education, and fortune rendered possible this triple dream of a woman, a philosopher, and a hero.  Born in a republic, educated in a court, daughter of a minister, wife of an ambassador, belonging by birth to the people, to the literary world by talent, to the aristocracy by rank, the three elements of the Revolution mingled or contended in her.  Her genius was like the antique chorus, in which all the great voices of the drama unite in one tumultuous concord.  A deep thinker by inspiration, a tribune by eloquence, a woman in attraction, her beauty, unseen by the million, required intellect to be admired, and admiration to be felt.  Hers was not the beauty of form and features, but visible inspiration and the manifestation of passionate impulse.  Attitude, gesture, tone of voice, look—­all obeyed her mind, and created her brilliancy.  Her black eyes, flashing with fire, gave out from beneath their long lids as much tenderness as pride.  Her look, so often lost in space, was followed by those who knew her, as if it were possible to find with her the inspiration she sought.  That gaze, open, yet profound as her understanding, had as much serenity as penetration.  We felt that the light of her genius was only the reverberation of a mine of tenderness of heart.  Thus there was a secret love in all the admiration she excited; and she, in admiration, cared only for love.  Love with her was but enlightened admiration.