third. "She knew too much, and was always trying to force her
knowledge upon others."

The legend has sprung up that Mme. de Stael was too wise and witty
to be acceptable to Napoleon; and many women repeated with unction
that the conqueror of Europe was no match for this frowsy little
woman. It is, perhaps, worth while to look into the facts, and to
decide whether Napoleon was really of so petty a nature as to feel
himself inferior to this rather comic creature, even though at the
time many people thought her a remarkable genius.

In the first place, knowing Napoleon, as we have come to know him
through the pages of Mme. de Remusat, Frederic Masson, and others,
we can readily imagine the impatience with which the great soldier
would sit at dinner, hastening to finish his meal, crowding the
whole ceremony into twenty minutes, gulping a glass or two of wine
and a cup of coffee, and then being interrupted by a fussy little
female who wanted to talk about the ethics of history, or the
possibility of a new form of government. Napoleon, himself, was
making history, and writing it in fire and flame; and as for
governments, he invented governments all over Europe as suited his
imperial will. What patience could he have with one whom an
English writer has rather unkindly described as "an ugly coquette,
an old woman who made a ridiculous marriage, a blue-stocking, who
spent much of her time in pestering men of genius, and drawing
from them sarcastic comment behind their backs?"

Napoleon was not the sort of a man to be routed in discussion, but
he was most decidedly the sort of man to be bored and irritated by
pedantry. Consequently, he found Mme. de Stael a good deal of a