Germaine de Staël - Restoration

Restoration

She was in Paris when the news of Napoleon's landing arrived and at once fled to Coppet, but a singular story, much discussed, is current of her having approved Napoleon's return. There is no direct evidence of it, but the conduct of her close ally Constant may be quoted in its support, and it is certain that she had no affection for the Bourbons. In October, after Waterloo, she set out for Italy, not only for the advantage of her own health but for that of her second husband, Rocca, who was dying of consumption.

Her daughter married Duke Victor de Broglie on 20 February 1816, at Pisa, and became the wife and mother of French statesmen of distinction. The whole family returned to Coppet in June, and Lord Byron now frequently visited Mme de Staël there. Despite her increasing ill-health she returned to Paris for the winter of 1816-1817, and her salon was much frequented. A warm friendship sprang up between Mme de Staël and the Duke of Wellington, whom she had first met in 1814, and she used her influence with him to have the size of the Army of Occupation greatly reduced. But she had already become confined to her room if not to her bed. She died on 14 July, and Rocca survived her little more than six months. Her deathbed conversion to Roman Catholicism surprised many, including Wellington, who remarked that while she was greatly afraid of death he had thought her incapable of believing in the afterlife.

Auguste Comte included Madame Stael in his Calendar of Great Men. In a book with the same name, Comte's disciple Frederic Harrison wrote about Stael and her works: "In Delphine a woman, for the first time since the Revolution, reopened the romance of the heart which was in vogue in the century preceding. Comte would daily recite the sentence from Delphine, 'There is nothing real in the world but love.', Byron, Shelley, and partly of Chateaubriand, their historical importance is great in the development of modern romanticism, of the romance of the heart, the delight in nature, and in the art, antiquities, and history of Europe."