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Philippe Martin

Kubernetes Programming with Go

Programming Kubernetes Clients and Operators
Using Go and the Kubernetes API
Philippe Martin
Blanquefort, France

ISBN 978-1-4842-9025-5 e-ISBN 978-1-4842-9026-2

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-9026-2

© Philippe Martin 2023

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively
licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is
concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in
any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks,

service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the
absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the
relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general
use.

The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the
advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate
at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Apress imprint is published by the registered company APress

Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY
10004, U.S.A.
To Mélina and Elsa, my constant source of truth
Introduction
Back in 2017, I was working for a company building video streaming
software. At the end of that year, a small team, including me, got
assigned a new job to work on deploying the Video CDN developed by
the company on Kubernetes. We decided to explore the concept of
Custom Resources and Operators to deploy this CDN.
The current Kubernetes release was 1.9, the concept of Custom
Resource Definition had just been released in 1.7, and the sample-
controller repository was the only documentation we knew of to help
build an Operator. The Kubernetes ecosystem, being especially lively,
had tools appearing in the following months, specifically the
Kubebuilder SDK. Thus, our project was launched.
From that moment on, I spent numerous days exploring how to
build Operators and other programs interacting with the Kubernetes
API. But the damage was done: I had started to learn Kubernetes
programming from specific to general, and it took me a long time to
fully understand the innards of the Kubernetes API.
I have written this book in the hope that it can teach new
Kubernetes developers how to program, from general to specific, with
the Kubernetes API in Go.

Chapters at a Glance
The target reader for this book has some experience working with
REST APIs, accessing them either by HTTP or using clients for specific
languages; and has some knowledge of the Kubernetes platform,
essentially as a user—for example, some experience deploying such
APIs or frontend applications with the help of YAML manifests.
Chapter 1 of the book explores the Kubernetes API and how it
implements the principles of REST. It especially focuses on the
Group-Version-Resource organization and the Kind concept
proposed by the API.
Chapter 2 continues by covering the operations proposed by the API
and the details of each operation, using the HTTP protocol.
 Chapters 3 to 5 describe the common and “low-level” Go libraries to
work with the Kubernetes API: the API and API Machinery Libraries.
Chapters 6 and 7 cover the Client-go Library—the high-level library
to work with the Kubernetes API in Go—and how to unit test code
using this library.
At this point in the book, the reader should be comfortable with
building Go applications working with native resources of the
Kubernetes API.
Chapters 8 and 9 introduce the concept of Custom Resources and
how to work with them in Go.
Chapters 10 to 12 cover the implementation of Kubernetes Operators
using the controller-runtime library.
Chapter 13 explores the Kubebuilder SDK, a tool to help develop and
deploy Kubernetes Operators.
By the end of the book, the reader should be able to start building
Kubernetes operators in Go and have a very good understanding of
what happens behind the scenes.
Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the
author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the book's
product page, located at https://github.com/Apress/Kubernetes-
Programming-with-Go-by-Philippe-Martin. For more detailed
information, please visit http://www.apress.com/source-code.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the whole Anevia “CDN” team who started
working with me on Kubernetes back in 2018: David, Ansou, Hossam,
Yassine, É tienne, Jason, and Michaël. Special thanks to Damien Lucas for
initiating this project and for having trusted us with this challenge.
My discovery of Kubernetes has been much easier and pleasant
thanks to the TGIK channel and its numerous episodes, hosted by Joe
Beda, Kris Nova, and many others. Plus, thanks to all the Kubernetes
community for such a great ecosystem!
Table of Contents
Chapter 1:​Kubernetes API Introduction
Kubernetes Platform at a Glance
OpenAPI Specification
Verbs and Kinds
Group-Version-Resource
Sub-resources
Official API Reference Documentation
The Deployment Documentation
Operations Documentation
The Pod Documentation
One-Page Version of the Documentation
Conclusion
Chapter 2:​Kubernetes API Operations
Examining Requests
Making Requests
Using kubectl as a Proxy
Creating a Resource
Getting Information About a Resource
Getting the List of Resources
Filtering the Result of a List
Deleting a Resource
Deleting a Collection of Resources
Updating a Resource
Managing Conflicts When Updating a Resource
Using a Strategic Merge Patch to Update a Resource
 Applying Resources Server-side
Watching Resources
Filtering During a Watch Session
Watching After Listing Resources
Restarting a watch Request
Allowing Bookmarks to Efficiently Restart a watch Request
Paginating Results
Getting Results in Various Formats
Getting Results as a Table
Using the YAML Format
Using the Protobuf Format
Conclusion
Chapter 3:​Working with API Resources in Go
API Library Sources and Import
Content of a Package
types.​go
register.​go
doc.​go
generated.​pb.​go and generated.​proto
types_​swagger_​doc_​generated.​go
zz_​generated.​deepcopy.​go
Specific Content in core/​v1
ObjectReference
ResourceList
Taint
Toleration
 Well-Known Labels
Writing Kubernetes Resources in Go
Importing the Package
The TypeMeta Fields
The ObjectMeta Fields
Spec and Status
Comparison with Writing YAML Manifests
A Complete Example
Conclusion
Chapter 4:​Using Common Types
Pointers
Getting the Reference of a Value
Dereferencing a Pointer
Comparing Two Referenced Values
Quantities
Parsing a String as Quantity
Using an inf.​Dec as a Quantity
Using a Scaled Integer as a Quantity
Operations on Quantities
IntOrString
Time
Factory Methods
Operations on Time
Conclusion
Chapter 5:​The API Machinery
The Schema Package
 Scheme
Initialization
Mapping
Conversion
Serialization
RESTMapper
Kind to Resource
Resource to Kind
Finding Resources
The DefaultRESTMappe​r Implementation
Conclusion
Chapter 6:​The Client-go Library
Connecting to the Cluster
In-cluster Configuration
Out-of-Cluster Configuration
Getting a Clientset
Using the Clientset
Examining the Requests
Creating a Resource
Getting Information About a Resource
Getting List of Resources
Filtering the Result of a List
Setting LabelSelector Using the Labels Package
Setting Fieldselector Using the Fields Package
Deleting a Resource
Deleting a Collection of Resources
 Updating a Resource
Using a Strategic Merge Patch to Update a Resource
Applying Resources Server-side with Patch
Server-side Apply Using Apply Configurations
Building an ApplyConfigurati​on from Scratch
Building an ApplyConfigurati​on from an Existing Resource
Watching Resources
Errors and Statuses
Definition of the metav1.​Status Structure
Error Returned by Clientset Operations
RESTClient
Building the Request
Executing the Request
Exploiting the Result
Getting Result as a Table
Discovery Client
RESTMapper
PriorityRESTMapp​er
DeferredDiscover​yRESTMapper
Conclusion
Chapter 7:​Testing Applications Using Client-go
Fake Clientset
Checking the Result of the Function
Reacting to Actions
Checking the Actions
Fake REST Client
 FakeDiscovery Client
Stubbing the ServerVersion
Actions
Mocking Resources
Conclusion
Chapter 8:​Extending Kubernetes API with Custom Resources
Definitions
Performing Operations in Go
The CustomResourceDe​finition in Detail
Naming the Resource
Definition of the Resource Versions
Converting Between Versions
Schema of the Resource
Deploying a Custom Resource Definition
Additional Printer Columns
Conclusion
Chapter 9:​Working with Custom Resources
Generating a Clientset
Using deepcopy-gen
Using client-gen
Using the Generated Clientset
Using the Generated fake Clientset
Using the Unstructured Package and Dynamic Client
The Unstructured Type
The UnstructuredList​Type
Converting Between Typed and Unstructured Objects
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
prohibition, they absented themselves of their own accord under
various pretexts. Fouché, the Minister of Police, called on her, and
insinuated that a brief retirement into the country would be
advisable, as giving the storm time to blow over. She took the hint,
and retired for a short time to St. Ouen. On her return to Paris she
avers that she did not find Napoleon’s wrath at all appeased.
Apparently she expected it to die a spontaneous death, for she did
not adopt the only means by which she could have pacified him, but
continued to applaud, if not instigate, an active hostility to his
measures. It would have been grand and magnanimous of Napoleon
to have despised the enmity of a woman, but he was neither grand
nor magnanimous. Moreover, the last thing which Madame de Staël
probably desired was to be despised. Nobody can deny her the
meed of admiration which she deserved for her love of liberty, and
the indomitable spirit with which, when in exile, she refused to
conciliate her oppressor by one word of praise. But, inasmuch as she
knew with whom she had to deal, and what would be the
consequence of her actions, one must admit that the amount of pity
which she claimed for herself, and has generally received, is
excessive. She was in direct contradiction to her own theories of a
woman’s true duty, when interfering in politics; and in being treated
by Napoleon as a man might have been, she paid the penalty of the
splendid intellect which emancipated her from the habits and the
views, if not from the weaknesses, of her sex. She was neither
helpless nor harmless, since she could stir up enemies to the tyrant
by her eloquence, and revenge herself, when punished, by the
power of her pen. She was exiled not because she was a woman
and defenceless, but because she was a genius and formidable. She
deliberately engaged in a contest of which the object was to prove
who was the stronger—herself or Napoleon.
She came out of it scarred, but dauntless. What right had she to
complain because the weapons that wounded her were keen?
Besides, paltry as Napoleon showed himself in many respects, he
was a phenomenon of so exceptional a nature that to judge him by
ordinary standards was absurd. It was the weakness of France which
made his opportunity; and if the epoch had not been abnormal, he
never could have dominated it. The people whom he governed had
two courses open to them: to submit or to protest. The first brought
profit, the second glory; and the glory which is purchased by no
sacrifice is unworthy of the name.
In 1801 Madame de Staël published her work on Literature, in
which, as she says, there was not a word concerning Napoleon,
although “the most liberal sentiments were expressed in it with
force.” The book produced an immense sensation; and Parisian
society, in its admiration for the writer, forgot the First Consul’s
displeasure, and again crowded round her. She admits that the
winter of 1801 was a pleasant one. Napoleon, passing through
Switzerland the previous summer, had seen and spoken with M.
Necker. It is characteristic of both interlocutors that the ex-
statesman was far more impressed with the warrior than the latter
with him. Necker divined in the young hero a strength of will to
which his own hesitating nature was a stranger; while Napoleon, on
his side, penetrating but prejudiced, contemptuously described the
once august financier in two words, “A banker and an Idealist.” With
his usual cynicism, he attributed Necker’s visit to the desire of
employment; whereas Madame de Staël affirmed that her father’s
chief object was to plead her cause. In this he was so far successful
that residence in France was for some time at least assured to her.
“It was,” she writes, “the last time that my father’s protecting hand
was extended over my life.” For the moment, either this beneficent
influence, or, as is more likely, a passing fit of good humor on the
part of Napoleon, enabled her to enjoy existence. Fouché consented
to recall several émigrés for whom she interceded, and even Joseph
Bonaparte once again treated her with cordiality, and entertained
her for a little time at his estate at Morfontaine.
A variety of circumstances arose to put an end to this state of
things and to revive Napoleon’s dislike to Madame de Staël. Her
father published his work, Dernières Vues de Politique et de Finance,
with the avowed intention of protesting against Napoleon’s growing
tyranny. His daughter had encouraged him in this feeling, herself
unable, as she declares, to silence this “Song of the Swan.” Then
Bernadotte had inaugurated a certain sullen opposition to the First
Consul, and Madame de Staël immediately became his friend. Finally,
her salon was more crowded than ever, and by great personages,
such as the Prince of Orange and other embryo potentates, besides
foreigners of celebrity in letters and science.
Napoleon detested salons. It was his conviction that a woman who
disposed of social influence might do anything in France, inasmuch
as he held that the best brains in the country were female. Madame
de Staël, moreover, possessed the art of keeping herself well before
the public. Even now she had just published Delphine, and all the
papers were full of it. To please Napoleon, they condemned it as
immoral—a strange criticism in that age, and an excellent
advertisement in any.
Napoleon, on Madame de Staël’s again visiting Switzerland, hinted
to Lebrun that she would do well not to return to Paris. His
obsequious colleague hastened to intimate this by letter; and
although the communication was not official, the First Consul’s
lightest intimations by this time carried so much weight that
Madame de Staël was compelled to obey. She did so very
reluctantly; and perhaps if her father’s prudence had not been
greater than her own, her longing to be back in the capital would
have overpowered every other consideration. As it was, she made
the best that she could of a year’s uninterrupted sojourn at Coppet.
The Tribunat meanwhile had shown itself again rebellious.
Bonaparte, irritated, declared that he would shake twelve or fifteen
of its members “from his clothes like vermin,” and Constant had no
choice but to rejoin his friend in Switzerland.
 CHAPTER IX.
NEW FACES AT COPPET.

Some remarkable people had already begun to cluster round the

Châtelaine of Coppet. De Gérando, Sismondi, Camille Jordan,
Madame de Krüdener, Madame Récamier—all are interesting names.
Camille Jordan, who was introduced by De Gérando, appears to have
been taken up at once with characteristic ardor by Madame de Staël.
His Vrai Sens du Vôte National sur le Consulat à Vie, published in
1802, was just the kind of trumpet-call to which she always
responded. Straightway her letters to him became frequent, and full
of the excessive fervor and flattery which distinguished all her
protestations of affection. Oddly enough, Madame de Krüdener, not
yet a priestess, but a most decided coquette, appears to have
exercised a rather perturbing influence upon these new relations.
Madame de Staël writes that she would have liked to send Jordan a
ring containing a lock of her hair, and formerly the property of her
husband, but she is restrained by the recollection of Madame de
Krüdener’s fair tresses, for which, as she learns, Camille entertains a
lively admiration. Another letter contains an invitation to him to join
her and one or two other friends in a journey to Italy, coupled with a
playful hint that in such scenes he might find her society more
agreeable than the lovely blonde’s. Camille not responding in the
way desired, Madame de Staël betrays some wounded feeling. She
had thought that when once she had admired Jordan’s writings so
much, everything must be in harmony between them. She had been
mistaken. She would take refuge in silence. Nevertheless she is not
silent; and Madame de Krüdener’s name reappears. Madame de
Staël is willing to admit that she is a remarkable person, but objects
that she is always talking of persons who have killed themselves for
love of her. Then Jordan is summoned to say if it be true that he is
in love, not with Madame, but with Mademoiselle de Krüdener? She
has nothing but a Greuze-like face to recommend her, and if she has
enthralled him then why has he not fallen a victim to every young
girl of fifteen? Nevertheless, if he really be in love, and will confess
it, Madame de Staël will set herself to study Mademoiselle de
Krüdener better, with a view to loving her herself if she prove indeed
worthy of Jordan’s affection.
In reading all this, one is forced to the conclusion that a more
emotional woman than Madame de Staël never trod the earth. Every
human creature, perhaps, has one unsolved, it may be insoluble,
riddle in his life—one mystery of feeling which nobody fathoms.
More especially is this true of women who live so much in sentiment;
and supremely true of a woman like Madame de Staël. That ineffable
something in her which nobody seems to have guessed while she
was living, of which Byron felt the presence in her without divining
the cause, was the passionate and unappeasable desire to be loved.
All men who had dealings with her appear to have misunderstood
her in so far that they believed her to be more dominated by her
head than her heart—instead of understanding that, in her, head and
heart were the systole and diastole of a temperament surprisingly
forcible but not essentially strong. Or, if they did learn to
comprehend her better at last, it was when she was no longer
young, and feeling of a certain sort had become, alas! ridiculous. As
long as she was entitled to feel and to suffer they made almost a
reproach to her of the intellectual superiority which they could not
deny, and cast her back upon her own thoughts for happiness.
Madame de Krüdener, on one occasion, arrived at the complacent
conclusion that Madame de Staël was jealous of her. Not jealous of
her beauty and golden locks, which was conceivable, and might have
been true, but jealous of her literary fame! Corinne jealous of
Valerie! It is true that Corinne had not yet seen the light, while
Valerie had not only appeared, but had met with great success. So
great an authority as St. Beuve pronounces Madame de Krüdener’s
novel to be a thing of joy, a work to be read thrice, “in youth, in
middle life, and in old age.” But it is possible to have many
intellectual qualities, and yet remain at such an immeasurable
distance beneath Madame de Staël that nothing but vanity could
scale the height.
Moreover, Madame de Krüdener’s meaner self had not been a
stranger to the immediate and surprising triumph of her work. She
was always intriguing, and intrigued to some purpose when her
novel was on the eve of publication. She ran about to all the
fournisseurs in Paris, asking them for bows à la Valerie, caps and
gowns à la Valerie.
They heard the name for the first time, but naturally proceeded to
call a variety of articles by an appellation presumably so fashionable,
and the success of the novel was assured. Madame de Krüdener,
promptly and conveniently oblivious of the sources of this sudden
triumph, allowed herself to become somewhat intoxicated by it, and
wrote to a friend that the “dear woman” (meaning Madame de
Staël) was jealous of her. The person at whom this accusation was
levelled probably never heard of it. She certainly would never have
divined it; and, the little difficulty about Jordan once overcome, she
appears to have found Madame de Krüdener’s society more than
tolerable. Indeed they ended by becoming affectionate friends; but
that was after the authoress of Valerie had undergone the mystic
change which transformed her from a flirt into a priestess.
She had always been immensely admired, and had not preserved
a spotless reputation. But she had one of those emotional natures in
which a restless vanity, love of novelty, a morbid sensibility and an
excess of imagination, combine to produce religious fervors.
Standing at a window in Riga one day, she saw an old admirer
drop dead at the very moment that he was lifting his hat to salute
her. This event made on her one of those terrifying and ineffaceable
impressions which in regenerate circles is known as “a call.” She
plunged into mysticism; became the exponent of a new dogma, and
finally claimed for herself the gift of prophecy. People were, of
course, not wanting to declare that her predictions had in several
instances been verified; and, her personal fascination remaining
always great, she now acquired an enormous influence. Her extreme
self-abnegation and boundless charities increased her reputation for
sanctity, and she even succeeded in bringing down on herself a
satisfactory amount of persecution. In Paris superstition was, as
always, rife. The days were not yet so remote when Philip Egalité
had gone to question the devil in the quarries of Montrouge; and
men were barely more than middle-aged who in their first youth had
looked on the brazen brow of Cagliostro, and felt their blood
agreeably frozen by the Comte de St. Germain’s casual mention of
personal experiences three hundred years old. But little more than
thirty years previous to Madame de Krüdener’s “revival” Mesmer had
seen numbers of the fairest and many not of the stupidest heads in
Paris gathered round his famous baquet. A little later the illuminati
had been credited unveraciously and to their scant honor, with a
share in the sanguinary priesthood of Robespierre, and finally
Mademoiselle Lenormand had shuffled the cards of prophecy at the
instance of Napoleon himself. Into this strange world, so exhausted
and cynical, yet excited, impulsive, and thirsting for novel emotions,
the Northern Sybil, with her strange, pale face and shining eyes,
came like a wandering star.
But all this was subsequent to our first meeting with her at
Coppet, when she was still fairly young and singularly pretty, and the
gold in her tresses owed as yet no fancied splendor to the aureole of
inspiration.
Madame Récamier, the charming Juliette, was a far more normal,
but a not less attractive person. Châteaubriand’s memoirs have
made her famous, but he was among the latest of her many swains.
Her path through life was strewn with conquests, and she had offers
of marriage by the score. They continued up to the age of fifty-one,
when the author of Réné laid a heart which was hardly worthy of her
at her feet.
Three generations of Montmorencys adored her; a German prince
of royal blood urged her to divorce her husband in order to marry
him; and Lucian Bonaparte was among the most ardent of her
slaves. Ampère the younger, at twenty, fell in love with her, she
being then forty-three; and Châteaubriand addressed her as “très
belle et très charmante” when she was seventy and blind. The little
Savoyards turned round in the streets to look at her, and when they
did so no longer she knew that her marvellous beauty was on the
wane. But the fascination of her grace, her goodness, her unfailing
tact and delicate intelligence survived her loveliness; and the men
who knew her still worshipped her for years after fresher charms
had attracted the eyes of the multitude. She was not a politician, but
her friendship with Madame de Staël gave her decided opinions, and
she incurred the anger of Napoleon by declining to be Dame du
Palais to one of his sisters. It was said, however, that what specially
raised his ire was that a throng which on one occasion had been
assembled to do homage to him, so far forgot his presence, when
Madame Récamier appeared, as to have eyes only for her.
Finally Constant, the inexplicable, unhappy, brilliant Constant,
sought the peace which he had never found in anyone in a tardy
passion for her. He sought in vain, for she treated him as she treated
all men, with a kind and gracious indifference which her unique
fascination robbed of all its sting. She influenced his political conduct
—not altogether for good, as it turned out in 1814, when Napoleon
returned from Elba. Vague hints at a rivalry before this date between
her and Madame de Staël are to be found in some of the
correspondence of the time, but they are contradicted by the tone of
Madame de Staël’s letters to her belle Juliette, and by Madame
Récamier’s own rare discretion.
Moreover, although Constant first saw Madame Récamier at
Coppet in 1806, and confided to her those grievances of his against
Madame de Staël, which just then were rising to exasperation point,
it was only in 1813, when she called upon him to defend the
interests of Murat at the Congress of Vienna, that he fell in love with
her. The correspondence which ensued between them does more
honor to her than to him. Leaving aside the questionable nature of
his passion, he allowed himself to speak of Madame de Staël with a
fractious mistrust which, even if transitory, could have come from
nobody with a more deplorable grace. The basis of the sentiment
appears to have been jealousy of Madame de Staël’s influence over
her devoted friend. Such a jealousy was as futile as paltry; for it
would have needed a more witching tongue even than Constant’s to
have shaken the loyalty of the loving Juliette. To gratify a request of
hers he wrote some fragments of memoirs and sketched a portrait of
Madame de Staël which, besides much praise, contains some furtive
sarcasm at her inexpugnable belief in herself—that large quality, too
grand to be called conceit, which, according to Constant, amounted
to a cultus and inspired a “religious respect.”
It is interesting to record that the first time Châteaubriand ever
saw Madame Récamier was at Madame de Staël’s. He had gone to
thank the latter for having occupied herself about his recall to
France. He found her at her toilette, talking eagerly, and twirling in
her fingers, as usual, a little green twig. Madame Récamier suddenly
entered, dressed in white. From that moment Châteaubriand was so
absorbed in her that he had no longer any attention to bestow on
her eloquent friend. This was in 1800. He did not see her again for
twelve years. Benjamin Constant, in the “portrait” already
mentioned, has left an account of Madame Récamier and Madame
de Staël, which gives a very good idea of both of them, and is
specially interesting as coming from such a source. He relates that,
at the first interview between them, Madame Récamier felt very shy.
He says:—
 Madame de Staël’s appearance has been much
discussed, but a magnificent glance, a sweet smile,
and an habitual expression of kindness, the absence of
all minute affectation and of all embarrassing reserve,
flattering words, praise a little direct but apparently
dictated by enthusiasm, an inexhaustible variety in
conversation, astonish, attract, and reconcile almost
everybody who approaches her. I know no woman,
and even no man, who is more convinced of her
immense superiority over the whole world, and who
renders this conviction less oppressive to others.
Nothing could be more charming than the
conversations between Madame de Staël and Madame
Récamier. The rapidity of the one in expressing a
thousand new thoughts, the rapidity of the second in
seizing and judging them; on the one side a strong
and masculine intelligence which unmasked
everything, on the other a delicate and penetrating
mind which understood everything. All this formed a
whole impossible to render for those who did not enjoy
the privilege of witnessing it.

Madame de Staël scattered golden rain of the frankest and

sincerest praise over Madame Récamier every time that she
addressed her. “You are exquisite,” “you are beautiful,” “you reign as
a queen over sentiment,” are among the sentences that stud every
other line of her letters. Another of her female friends was she
whom she named the “sweet Annette de Gérando,” the wife of the
author of The Signs and Art of Thinking in their Mutual Relations,
the Origin of Human Intelligence, the Comparative History of
Philosophic Systems, etc. He was a philanthropist as well as a
philosopher, and Madame de Staël in later years once made rather a
bitter allusion to this fact. As time went on, and Napoleon’s star
blazed brighter, De Gérando was unable to resist the general
infection of idolatry; moreover, he had accepted a post under the
new Government, and the withering blight of officialism fell to a
certain extent on his spirit. “There is too much philanthropy in his
friendship,” wrote Madame de Staël to Jordan. “One is afraid of
being treated by him like a pauper.”
But in the summer of 1801 all this was still in the future, and
harmony and wit reigned at Coppet. Sismondi about this time
appears on the scene; discreet, observant, serene, reasonable, he
conceived for Madame de Staël a friendship which remained
moderate in expression and sincere in feeling to the last. He was not
as much dazzled by her as many, and saw her failings clearly.
Occasionally she even wounded his quiet self-love, and once or
twice, when very restless and excited, she offended him. But he was
invariably drawn back to her by the spell of her goodness. He
appears as a rock of strength amid all the sparkling, moving,
changing tide of ideas and feelings that rippled, dashed, recoiled,
and returned unceasingly in every hour of the sojourn at Coppet. His
steady sense and calm judgment bring out into sharper contrast the
unrest of Constant; the flashing splendor of Madame de Staël; the
dreamy refinement of Mathieu de Montmorency; the fantastic charm
of Madame de Krüdener, and the unfailing grace of the lovely
“Juliette.”
Bonstetten was yet another visitor at the château. He was called
the Swiss Voltaire, was eternally young, and even grew younger and
more plastic in mind as the unnoticed years crept over him. He had
seen Madame Necker in Paris when she was still unmarried, and
reappeared in her daughter’s home at Coppet as gay, as smiling, as
vivacious and witty as he had shown himself in the long-vanished
salon of Madame de Vermenoux. He laid himself at Madame de
Staël’s feet at once, was received by her with her usual gracious
warmth, and profited by her keen but generous criticism of his
works. Everybody began by gently laughing at Bonstetten’s incurable
youthfulness, and ended by adoring him for it. He wanted steadiness
of intellectual purpose—a “belfry,” as St. Beuve expresses it; in other
words, some central fact of mind round which all his ideas could rally
—but he had plenty of insight, and, amid the universal eulogium of
Madame de Staël’s powers, seems to have been the first to point out
a defect in her which Schiller commented on later. For when writing
of her to Frederica Brun, he says: “Her goodness is extreme, and
nobody has more intellect; but that which is best in you, in her does
not exist. She lacks feeling for art, and sees no beauty except in
eloquence and intelligence. She has more practical wisdom than
anybody, but uses it more for her friends than herself.”
Frederica Brun herself came to Geneva about this time, and has
left enthusiastic descriptions of Madame de Staël, of Necker,
Madame Necker de Saussure and Madame Rilliet-Hüber. She also
bore testimony to Madame de Staël’s devotion to her children. Her
eldest son, Auguste, and her only daughter, Albertine, were destined
all her life to solace her by their love for much that she suffered. She
directed the education of both her boys, but occupied herself
especially with that of the girl. She was accused by some of her
friends, even by Sismondi, of not caring very much for her children;
but no word of theirs ever betrayed any sense of such a deficiency in
her. On the contrary, both Auguste and Albertine always spoke and
wrote of her with the utmost enthusiasm.
After spending two summers and one winter uninterruptedly at
Coppet, during which period she wrote and published Delphine, the
desire to return to France grew into an overpowering force.
Napoleon had now been declared Consul for life, and was preparing
to invade England. She hoped, she said, that amid such multifarious
occupations he would not have leisure to conceive any objection
against her establishing herself within a few miles of Paris, near
enough, in fact, to enjoy the society of such friends as would not be
too much in awe of the potentate to pay her occasional visits. She
further deluded herself with the notion that Napoleon would shrink
from the odium of exiling a woman so well known as herself. Such a
hope shows how simple Madame de Staël could still be at times.
Napoleon was no longer in a position in which blame for mere details
of conduct could touch him, and his career from this moment was to
be one long outrage on public opinion.
 Madame de Staël established herself in a country house about ten
miles from Paris. Then there happened a circumstance which she
had not foreseen. In the eighteen months of her sojourn at Coppet,
the society which she knew formerly had grown baser. A whole race
of parasites had arisen, whose real or fancied interest it was to
obtain the favor of Napoleon by denouncing the people whom he
detested. A woman, whose name is suppressed, lost no time in
informing Napoleon that the road leading to Madame de Staël’s
dwelling was crowded with her visitors. Immediately one of her
friends warned her that a gendarme would probably be sent to her
without loss of time. She instantly became a prey to anxiety, an
excessive anxiety it is certain, for she was excessive in most things.
She wrote to De Gérando to plead her cause with Talleyrand; she
solicited the good offices of Lucian and Joseph Bonaparte; and
finally she wrote a passionate but dignified letter to Napoleon
himself. Then she waited, in the midst of strangers, and consuming
herself with a fiery impatience that made every hour of fresh
suspense a torture. She spent the nights sitting up with her maid,
listening for the tramp of the horse which was to bring the
gendarme and his message. But the gendarme did not arrive; and,
worn out with her terrors, Madame de Staël bethought herself of her
“beautiful Juliette.” That loving and devoted person assured her of a
kind welcome at St. Brice, a place about two leagues from Paris.
Thither Madame de Staël went, and finding there a varied and
agreeable society, was for the time being cured of her fears. Hearing
nothing more about her exile, she persuaded herself that Napoleon
had changed his mind, and she returned with some friends to her
own lodgings at Maffliers. It is probable enough that some officious
courtier again drew her enemy’s attention to her; or perhaps
Madame de Staël’s own letter, in which she spoke of her children’s
education and her father’s advanced age, and betrayed in every line
her haunting fear of exile, enlightened Napoleon as to the tenderest
spot in which to wound her. Disliking her as he did, and irritated by
the mere thought of her as he seems to have been, it would have
been highly characteristic of his southern malice to be decided in his
course by the very prayers that should have deterred him.
However that may be, she was sitting at table with her friends one
late September afternoon when she perceived a rider, dressed in
grey, pull up at her gate and ring the bell. This prosaic-looking
individual was the messenger of destiny. She felt it at once, although
he did not wear the dreaded uniform. He was the bearer of a letter
signed by Napoleon, and ordering her to depart within twenty-four
hours for any place not nearer than forty leagues to Paris.
Needless to say, Madame de Staël did not submit without protest,
and represented so energetically to the gendarme that a woman and
three children could not be hurried off with no more preparation
than a recruit’s, as to induce him to allow her three days at Paris in
which to get ready.
On their way they stopped for a few moments at Madame
Récamier’s, and there found General Junot, who, like everybody
else, was one of Juliette’s admirers. Perhaps to please the latter, he
promised to intercede with the despot for her illustrious friend; and
he was, as it appears, so far successful that Napoleon accorded
permission for Madame de Staël to reside at Dijon. As soon as
Madame Récamier received this news she communicated it in a
letter to the care of Camille Jordan. But Madame de Staël never
received it, having been driven, as she says, by daily admonitions
from her gendarme—but as Madame Récamier appeared to think, by
her own impatient agitation—away from Paris to Morfontaine. This
was the home of Joseph Bonaparte. Probably pitying her state of
excitement and misery, he invited her thither to spend a few days.
He was just then animated, as far as he dared be, by a spirit of
opposition to his mighty brother; and perhaps—who knows?—was
kind to Madame de Staël as much for that reason as for any other.
In any case, nobody in those days appears to have been profoundly
in earnest except Madame de Staël herself. She could not recover
either patience or peace. She was wretched at Morfontaine in spite
of the kindness of her host and hostess, because surrounded with
officers of the Government who had accepted the servitude against
which she rebelled. She knew that her father would receive her, but
the thought of taking refuge at Coppet again was distasteful to her.
She had but just left that place, and to return thither was to
resume habits of which she had tired, and to acknowledge herself
beaten. Probably she longed for a change; and probably enough,
also, she was in that morbid condition of mind in which to do the
simplest and most obvious thing is to rob grief of all its luxury.
Finally, she decided to crave permission through Joseph to betake
herself to Germany, with the distinct assurance that the French
Minister there would consider her a foreigner and leave her in peace.
Joseph hastened to St. Cloud for the purpose, and Madame de Staël
retired to an inn within two leagues of Paris, there to await his reply.
At the end of one day, receiving no answer, and fearing (but why?)
to attract attention to herself by remaining any longer in one inn,
she sought the shelter of another; and is extremely—one cannot
really help thinking needlessly—eloquent in describing her anguish
during these self-imposed peregrinations. At last Joseph’s letter
came. He not only forwarded her the permission to go to Berlin, but
added several valuable letters of introduction, and took leave of her
in the kindest terms.
Accompanied by her children and Benjamin Constant, she started,
hating the postillions for their boasted speed, and feeling that every
step taken by the horses was a fresh link in the ever-lengthening
and indestructible chain of which one end was Paris and the other
her heart.
What Constant’s feelings were she does not say, and speaks of his
accompanying her as a spontaneous act of friendship. But he had
been exiled as well as herself; and although his desire to go to
Germany had partly determined hers, and neither wished to
separate from the other, there are indications that Constant quitted
France as reluctantly as his companion.
 Their relations were already varied by alternate periods of shine
and storm; and although her influence over him was still immense, it
had begun, as was inevitable with such a man, to fret him. And
probably some doubts that were not political, and some sufferings
that had their root in another cause than exile, played their part in
the extreme agitation of Madame de Staël’s mind at this period.
 CHAPTER X.
MADAME DE STAËL VISITS GERMANY.

At Metz Madame de Staël was received in triumph. The Prefect of

the Moselle entertained her, parties were given in her honor, and all
the literary big-wigs of the place hastened to do her homage. She
there, for the first time, came into personal contact with Charles de
Villers, with whom she had previously corresponded on the subject
of Kant. Of course she was charmed with him, her first impulse
invariably being to find every clever or distinguished person
delightful. Her friendship with him resembled all her friendships. She
began by expecting to have inspired as much enthusiasm as she felt,
possibly a little more, seeing that she was a woman, and such a
woman, and exiled to boot. Villers, a cross-grained kind of Teuton,
had no idea of allowing his theories, which were extremely sturdy on
all subjects, to be spirited away by any of Madame de Staël’s
conversational conjuring tricks. They discussed philosophy, and he
railed sourly at French taste; and, perhaps by way of proving his
final emancipation from all such fetters, he had obtained the
companionship of a certain Madame de Rodde, whom Madame de
Staël described, with some asperity, as a “fat German.”
But she separated from the philosopher still quite charmed with
his appreciation of the good and true, and not in the least repulsed
by his ways. On the contrary, she wrote to him shortly afterwards,
reproaching him passionately with his silence. One can imagine how
absurd such exactions must have seemed to the good Villers, with
his head full of Kant and Madame de Rodde to attend to his
comforts; but the truth was that Madame de Staël’s mood just then
caused her to make herself needlessly miserable about everything.
To Mathieu de Montmorency she wrote that she was filled with
terror, and fancied that death must shortly overtake her father,
children, friends, everybody dear to her.
She seemed to forget entirely that it was her own choice which
had taken her to Germany; Napoleon had banished her merely from
Paris; and there was nothing to prevent her returning to Coppet to
soothe the last years and enjoy the conversation of her venerated
father. But this did not suit her; she required a wider intellectual
horizon and more varied society.
For many reasons, some of them dependent on the political bias
of monarchical writers, it has been the fashion to proclaim Madame
de Staël’s opposition to Napoleon as inspired by pure hatred of
despotism. To us this does not seem quite a correct version. If it
were, Madame de Staël would have been a totally different person;
colder, less impulsively benevolent, less thoroughly womanly. All
through her life her conduct was determined by her feeling towards
individuals. While professing republicanism she counted, as we have
seen, hosts of reactionary friends; the claims to consideration of
noble names and social distinctions weighed powerfully with her;
and all her love of liberty could not save her from being torn by
sympathy for every Royalist head that fell during the Revolution.
Such a catholicity of feeling constitutes a charming woman, but not
a great politician; and Madame de Staël’s liberal instincts and
penetrating insight only lent force to her hatred of Napoleon, they
did not originate it. There was a natural antagonism between their
natures—circumstances increased this, and obstinacy on both sides
confirmed it—and Madame de Staël made the most of a persecution
which, while condemning her to inaction, added enormously to her
fame.
That Napoleon in his most transcendent moments was great
simply by stupendous intellect and amazing will; that in his baser
moments he was inconceivably callous, cynical, arrogant and mean,
perhaps few persons in these days will be found to deny. But it is
overstating the case to assert, as has been done, that he persecuted
Madame de Staël from unmitigated envy of her superiority. Much as
he resented intellectual power in a woman, it is nevertheless most
likely that what really inspired his action against Madame de Staël
was her turbulent disposition and the restless mind which made her
the centre of Parisian opposition. As to this opposition itself, without
any wish to detract from its sublimity, it may fairly be asked whether
—at the time Constant began his denunciations, and Madame de
Staël encouraged them—it was altogether well-timed. To declaim
against Napoleon’s growing despotism was perhaps irresistible to
independent spirits; but such declamation necessarily remained
sterile of results in the state in which France then was. What would
these orators have substituted for the strong will of a Dictator? The
greed for place of a Talleyrand? The mystic fervor of a
Montmorency? The dissolute ambition of a Barras? Between the
sanguinary excesses of the Terreur Rouge, the lust for revenge of
the Terreur Blanche, the incorrigible short-sightedness and criminal
frivolity of the “Coblentz” faction, the diseased logic of the Jacobins,
and the frightful collapse of intelligence, morality, decency, and
humanity that extended from end to end of France, it is difficult to
understand what ruler could have governed it for other ends than
personal ones. Napoleon sprang armed from the ruin of France, as a
kind of fatal embodiment of all the evil under which she groaned and
all the crime that stained her. And yet who shall say that his career
of conquest, desolating as it was, could have been spared from
European history? It enters as a factor into almost all that this
closing century has brought us—the unity of Italy, the power of
Germany, France’s own awakening to the limitations of her destiny.
It was not given to any mortal, eighty years ago, to foresee all this;
and Madame de Staël, who was in most things of a preternatural
acuteness, only foresaw the coming despotism and its immediate,
not its ultimate, results. Nevertheless, had her bias against Napoleon
not been a personal one, she might have submitted more quietly to
his first acts of tyranny, and only protested when his insatiable
ambition had prostrated France at the feet of the nations. She might
have done this, because she was constantly led away by her
feelings, and could be blind on occasion. That she was not more
dazzled by Napoleon must be considered a lucky accident.
 In Germany the feeling in regard to her was not generally
favorable. The mightiest minds, indeed, admired her great intellect;
and Goethe’s unwilling homage is the brightest jewel in her crown.
But it was as a woman that she excited a somewhat sour antipathy.
Her plaintive little friend Madame de Beaumont had called her a
tourbillon, and Heine has only added a doubtful picturesqueness to
this description when designating her a “whirlwind in petticoats.” But
as a most disturbing element she certainly did introduce herself into
German society. Rahel Varnhagen acidly—it is difficult to help
thinking ungenerously—echoes the usual complaint of her
obstreperousness, saying, with striking lack of originality, by the way,
“She is nothing to me but an inconvenient hurricane.”
Schiller, as is well known, was infinitely more magnanimous. He
had made up his mind as to her kind of intellect before she came. In
1798 he had already pronounced her to be of an “exalted,
reasoning, entirely unpoetical nature”; and, although he clung, after
seeing her, to his conviction that “of poetry she had no conception,”
he was obviously surprised and enchanted at her native goodness,
her healthy simplicity of mind, and unaffectedness. To her
penetration, brilliancy and vivacity, he does full justice. And if, as her
book on Germany afterwards showed, his statement that “nothing
existed for her unless her torch could illuminate it,” was as
misleading as are most metaphors, still its descriptiveness enables
one exactly to understand the particular sort of splendor with which
Madame de Staël flashed through the windings of the German mind.
Schiller—poor man!—was quite pathetic over her amazing
volubility, which left him, with his halting French, a hopeless distance
behind her. It is rather comic to trace the dismay at her exhausting
personality which pierces through all his admiration for, and interest
in, her mind. To Goethe, who was coquetting at Jena, and wished
the brilliant stranger to come there to him, Schiller later writes: “I
saw the De Staël yesterday, in my house, and again to-day at the
Dowager Duchess’s. One would be reminded of the sieve of the
Danaïdes, if Oknos with his donkey did not then occur to one.” He
fears she will have to discover that the Germans in Weimar can be
fickle, as well as the French, unless it strikes her soon that it is time
she went. To Körner he complained that the devil had brought the
French female philosopher to torment him just in the middle of his
new play.
He found her, of all mortals within his experience, “the most
gesticulative, combative, and talkative,” even while admitting that
she was almost the most cultivated and intellectual of women. But
he declared that she destroyed all poetry in him, and waxed plaintive
once again over his ineffectual struggles with French. He proclaimed
that not to admire her for her fine mind and liberality of sentiment
was impossible; and he breathed a sigh of the most unfeigned relief
when she departed. All the Court personages felt that they had been
having a severe time of it; although the bright and petulant Duchess
Amelia was enchanted in the first instance, and wrote to Goethe
imploring him to come and study the phenomenon. He resisted for a
long while, but finally arrived—not without a previous sneer or two.
Madame de Staël was charmed to know him—in fact, her days in
Weimar passed in a perfect effervescence of delight. While the
Germans were coldly, sometimes rather snarlingly, criticizing her, she
was admiring them. Schiller she speaks of with the liveliest
enthusiasm. Their acquaintance began with an animated discussion
on the respective merits of French and foreign dramas. Madame de
Staël maintained that Corneille and Racine were unsurpassable.
Schiller, of course, differed; and managed to make her heed his
reasons, in spite of his difficulty in speaking French. His quiet
simplicity and earnestness, as well as his originality of mind, became
instantly manifest to the illustrious stranger. With her, admiration
meant always the most ungrudging friendship; and this was the
sentiment with which Schiller inspired her for the rest of his days.
Goethe she found cold, and she was characteristically disappointed
at his no longer displaying the passionate ardor of Werther “Time
has rendered him a spectator,” she says; yet she admits the
universality of his mind and his prodigious information when once
prevailed on to talk. It is provoking to think that she never saw the
best of Goethe, and that this disappointing result was—although she
was far, indeed, from guessing it—her own fault chiefly; for she
informed the poet that she intended to print his conversation, and of
this Goethe had a horror. He states as much in a letter to Schiller,
and gives as his reason the sorry figure which Rousseau had cut in
his correspondence—just then published—with Madame de la Tour
Franqueville and her friend.
The Dowager Duchess Amelia was a vivacious, pleasure-loving,
singularly intelligent, and liberal-minded woman, who had governed
the duchy during her son’s minority admirably, and made allies for
herself among the best German intellects. Thanks to her, her son
Karl August had been so trained, that, in the midst of a court circle
to which the light of the eighteenth century had barely penetrated,
he showed a most manly contempt for the ideals of mistresses of
the robes and silver sticks in waiting, and swept all such fripperies
away to become the dearest friend of Goethe. His duchess (whose
courage both extorted Napoleon’s admiration and saved her husband
from further proofs of his ire) was a woman of grand character, and
as great a contrast, except in what was really best in both of them,
to her lively mother-in-law as could well be imagined. She insisted
on the most uncompromising observance of etiquette, and wore to
the last day of her life the costume which had prevailed in the years
when she was young.
Of this remarkable trio of exalted personages it was the reigning
duchess whom Madame de Staël selected for her friend. Indeed, she
never mentions the Dowager Duchess in corresponding with the
daughter-in-law, and in her Allemagne dismisses the Grand Duke
with a few lines, in which she alludes to his military talents and
speaks of his conversation as piquante and thoughtful.
From Weimar, Madame de Staël went to Berlin, with letters from
their highnesses of the little court to the lovely and charming Queen
Louise.
In a well-known letter to the Grand Duchess (the first of their long
correspondence), she records a fête which took place immediately
after her arrival. It was a masquerade representing Alexander’s
return to Babylon; and the beautiful queen, of whom Madame de
Staël is lost in admiration, danced in it herself. To this pageant
succeeded various costume quadrilles, in which Kotzebue appeared
as a priest of Mercury, poppy crowned, caduceus in hand, and so
ugly and awkward, that Madame de Staël wonders why her
imagination was not irretrievably ruined by the sight of him.
One likes to think of her at this court in the midst of such famous
and distinguished people; the personages so outwardly brilliant, so
inwardly dull, who surrounded her having vanished down the gulfs of
Time, her own unique personality stands out vividly against the
picturesque but confused background reconstructed by our fancy.
At Berlin she first saw and liked August Wilhelm Schlegel, destined
later to be so unwelcome to Sismondi, Bonstetten, and her other
friends at Coppet. She succumbed at once to the varied attractions
of his colossal learning, his surprising linguistic accomplishments,
and his great conversational powers. She felt that here was a
foeman worthy of her steel, and she magnanimously overlooked his
acerbity, his pedantry and vanity. She had indeed a royal indifference
to the defects of great minds. It was only the greatness she cared
for.
Berlin was destined to be associated with the greatest, perhaps
the most genuine, grief of her life. She left it pleased with her
reception, enriched with new friends, new experiences, and new
ideas. She had been happier there than six months previously she
would have admitted she could ever be again; far happier than at
Coppet, which for years past had only been a place where she
tarried and amused herself as she could until the moment came for
returning to Paris. She had treasured up a wealth of conversation for
her father—all kinds of novel and delightful impressions which she
felt would be listened to by nobody so appreciatively as by him; and
she started for Vienna, there to glean a little more. But she had
hardly set foot in Austria when a courier brought her the news that
her father was dangerously ill. He was, in truth, dead, and the
messenger knew it; but the fact was withheld, to be broken to her
later on. She instantly quitted Vienna, where, as she expresses it,
“her happiness had ended,” and started homewards. On the road her
father’s death was communicated to her. Her grief was overpowering
and demonstrative to the last degree. It was not only sorrow that
she felt, but an overmastering terror, for it seemed to her that with
her father her last moral support had vanished. Henceforward she
would bend to the storms of life like a reed.
On arriving at Coppet, she sank into a condition that temporarily
resembled dementia. The idea that in losing her father her whole
existence was irretrievably wrecked from its moorings, and would
drift aimlessly in the future, again filled her mind, and this time with
greater force. To every remonstrance she only answered, “I have
lost my father.” She soon recovered—strangely soon as it seemed to
many—her old elasticity and fire, but a curious secret change was
wrought in her from the hour of her loss. She showed mystic
yearnings, and became even a little superstitious. She invoked her
father in her prayers, and nothing deeply agreeable to her ever
happened without her saying, “My father has obtained this for me.”
One of Necker’s latest acts was to write a letter to Napoleon
begging him to rescind the order for Madame de Staël’s exile.
Needless to say that the pathetic request had no effect upon the
person to whom it was addressed. Domestic sentiment at no time
appealed strongly to Napoleon, and at this period he had almost
reached his final pitch of unreasoning and arrogant egoism. The
murder of the Duc d’Enghien had hardened all his nature, and in
preparing to have himself proclaimed Emperor he had kicked away
any useless rubbish in the shape of scruples that might still
encumber him.
Now, when the first germ of decay had begun to consume the
core of his splendor, his attitude towards Madame de Staël itself
altered. His persecution of her ceased to be a capricious thing
compounded of spasmodic spite on his side and sporadic fears on
hers, and became an organized system of repression which placed
its originator in a light all the meaner that the woman against whom
it was directed rose from this time to a new and grander moral
altitude.
 CHAPTER XI.
MADAME DE STAËL AND AUGUSTE SCHLEGEL
AT ROME.

Madame de Staël sought to solace her grief for her father’s death
by writing “The Private Life of Necker,” a short sketch intended to
serve as preface to a volume of his fragmentary writings. Constant
spoke very feelingly of this sketch, and pronounced it to be a
revelation of all that was best in the writer’s head and heart. He said
that all her gifts of mind and feeling were here devoted to express
and adorn a single sentiment, one for which she claimed the
sympathy of the world.
This is all quite true, but it is natural that the sketch should affect
us less than it did Madame de Staël’s contemporaries. Necker was a
good and intelligent man. He had varied talents of no common order,
and an incorruptibility of character which would be rare—given the
circumstances—in any age, and, by his admirers, was supposed to
be especially so in his. But joined to all these qualities in him were
just the foibles which spoil an image for posterity. He had a profound
compassion for what he considered the hardships of his lot. It is
touching to read the way—so simple, loving, and yet ingenuous—in
which Madame de Staël records such facts as the following:—“It was
painful to him to be old. His figure, which had grown very stout and
made movement irksome to him, gave him a feeling of shyness that
prevented his going into society. He hardly ever got into a carriage
when anybody was looking at him, and he did not walk where he
could be seen. In a word, his imagination loved grace and youth,
and he would say to me sometimes, ‘I do not know why I am
humiliated by the infirmities of age, but I feel that it is so.’ And it
was thanks to this sentiment that he was loved like a young man.”
 For the rest, the sketch is one long impassioned elegy in prose.
One is astonished at the sudden creative force of expression in it. It
is graphic by mere power of words without any help from metaphor.
It was not in Madame de Staël’s nature to mourn in solitude, and
we have Bonstetten’s authority for the fact that the summer of 1804
was one of the most delightful which he had ever passed at the
Château. Schlegel, Constant, Sismondi, were all there, as well as
Bonstetten, himself, and Madame Necker de Saussure, now more
than ever devoted to her cousin. Madame de Staël had also a new
visitor, Müller, the historian, whose learning was stupendous, and
who wrangled from morning till night on subjects of amazing
erudition with Schlegel. The mistress of the house, although far from
being the equal of the two combatants in learning, sometimes
rushed between them with her fiery eloquence, like an angel with a
flaming sword; but most of the society were reduced to silence.
Sismondi felt a perfect ignoramus, and talked plaintively to
Bonstetten of going to Germany, there to drink in facts and theories
at the source of the new intellect. In short, the German “Revival”
was beginning, and Madame de Staël in bringing Auguste Schlegel
to Switzerland had broken a large piece off the mountain of learning,
like somebody in the fairy tale who carried away a slice from the
Island of Jewels.
In October, 1804, Madame de Staël started with Schlegel and her
three children for Italy, and it is to this journey that the world owes
Corinne. It is said that Schlegel first taught Madame de Staël to
appreciate art—that is, painting, sculpture, and architecture. For
music she had always had a passion, and both sang and played
agreeably. But plastic beauty had as yet been a sealed book to her,
and she had not even any great appreciation of scenery. A
spontaneous feeling for all these she perhaps never acquired. Ste.
Beuve, indeed, complains that the spot on Misenum where she
places Corinne on one occasion, was the least picturesque of many
beautiful points of view. Nevertheless, Italy revived her. She found
hope and thought and voice anew beneath that magic sky. There
was nothing but the still-abiding sense of loss to mar the pleasure of
her visit. The diplomatic agents of Napoleon abstained from
interference with her, and Joseph had given her letters introducing
her to all the best society in Rome. Unlike her own Corinne, however,
she found it very uninteresting, and wrote complainingly to
Bonstetten that Humboldt was her most congenial companion. The
Roman princes she found extremely dull, and preferred the
cardinals, as being more cultivated, or more probably more men of
the world. For the rest, she was received with the liveliest respect,
and even enthusiasm; was made a member of the Arcadian
Academy, and had endless sonnets written upon her. Unfortunately,
her Dix Années d’Exil does not speak of this Italian journey, and so,
for the impression she received, one has to turn to Corinne, where,
of course, everything reappears more or less transfigured. One
would have liked to know the genesis of that work, on what occasion
it took root, and how it grew, in Madame de Staël’s mind. How much
did she really know of that poor, lampooned, insulted, and squint-
eyed Corilla who was the origin of her enchanting Sibyl? How far
below the surface did she really see of that strange Roman world, so
cosmopolitan, so chaotic after the French invasion, so thrilled with
fugitive novel ideas, so steeped in time-worn apathy? It would be
delightful to know what was the impression which Madame de Staël
herself produced in the few salons where a little culture prevailed,
and what was the true notion concerning her in that motley and
decaying society of belated Arcadians, exhausted cicisbei and abatini
lapsed forever from the genial circles where their youth had passed
in gossiping and sonneteering.
Hers must have seemed a curious and forcible figure among all
those frivolous “survivals”; and great and strange, mad and merry as
were the many foreigners who found their way at various times to
Rome, probably no more striking couple ever appeared there than
Madame de Staël and Auguste Schlegel.
As soon as she returned to Switzerland she began Corinne. At
Coppet some of her old circle immediately gathered round her again:
Madame Necker de Saussure, of course, and Madame Rilliet-Hüber,
Schlegel, Constant, and Sismondi, assembled to enjoy her society
once more. The private theatricals in which she delighted were again
resumed, and such tragedies as Zaire and Phèdre performed, as well
as slight comedies composed by the châtelaine herself. Madame de
Staël was fond of acting; and although she had no special talent, her
imposing presence, and the earnestness with which she played,
made her performance a pleasing one—at any rate, to her admirers.
When Corinne was drawing to an end, its authoress could no
longer resist her old and recurring temptation to return to France.
She went first to Auxerre; then, profiting by the indulgence of
Fouché, who, when it was possible (and politic), always shut one
eye, she accepted an invitation to Acosta, a property near Meulon
belonging to Madame de Castellane. Some of her old friends
ventured there to visit her, and in peace and reviving hope she
completed Corinne. It was no sooner published than it was hailed
with universal applause.
All this success annoyed Napoleon, possibly because it revealed in
his enemy greater powers than he had hitherto suspected, hence a
greater influence with all enlightened minds. According to some, an
article which appeared in the Moniteur attacking Corinne was written
by the Imperial hand. And this first sign of ire was followed by a new
decree of banishment, which sent Madame de Staël back to Coppet.
There a few new figures came to join the usual set, among them
Prince Auguste of Prussia, who straightway fell a victim to Madame
Récamier. For a few weeks this love affair introduced a new element
of romantic, yet very human, interest into the intensely intellectual
life of Coppet. The Prince wished Madame Récamier to marry him;
and for a short time, either dazzled by the prospect of such splendor,
or really attracted by her royal wooer, she hesitated. But such a step
would have involved a divorce from M. Récamier. He was old; he had
lately lost his fortune; he had always been good to her; and Juliette
made up her mind that it would be too unkind to leave him.
Some other scenes not altogether literary were passing just then
in the Château. The relations between Madame de Staël and
Constant, of late much strained, had now become constantly stormy.
Sismondi, some years later, in writing to the Countess of Albany,
referred to them as really distressing, and apparently Madame
Récamier was in the flattering but uncomfortable position of having
to listen to and, as well as she could, soothe both parties.
Constant would have married Madame de Staël, but she desired a
secret marriage, and he would only hear of an open one. It was only
in 1808 he finally put an end to his perplexities by marrying
Charlotte von Hardenberg. He carefully avoided telling Madame de
Staël of his intention beforehand, being still too much under her
influence to bear her criticisms and possible reproaches with
equanimity.
About November, 1807, Madame de Staël had returned again to
Germany, accompanied by two of her children, by Constant,
Sismondi, and Schlegel. From Munich she wrote one of her
characteristic letters to Madame Récamier:—
“I have spent five days here, and I leave for Vienna in an hour.
There I shall be thirty leagues farther from you and from all who are
dear to me. All society here has received me in a charming manner,
and has spoken of my beautiful friend with admiration. You have an
aerial reputation which nothing common can touch. The bracelet you
gave me [this bracelet contained Madame Récamier’s portrait] has
caused my hand to be kissed rather oftener, and I send you all the
homage which I receive.”
In another she significantly remarks:—
“The Prince de Ligne is really amiable and good above all things.
He has the manners of M. de Narbonne, and a heart. It is a pity he
is old, but all that generation fill me with an invincible tenderness.”
This is one of her touching allusions to her father, of whom all
“good gray heads” reminded her. But the Prince de Ligne and Necker
were two very different people. The former was the ideal of a grand
seigneur, clever, brave, handsome, all in a supreme degree; the
descendant of a chivalrous race, and as gallant and noble himself as
any of them. He was extremely witty, and quickly achieved the
conquest of the Empress Catherine when he was sent on a mission
to Russia in 1782. He followed in her suite through the Crimea on
the occasion of her famous journey there with Joseph II., and his
amusing account of this expedition is one of his claims to literary
reputation. The last years of his brilliant life were embittered by the
loss of his property, consequent on the French invasion of Belgium,
and by the death in battle of his eldest and best-beloved son.
Madame de Staël probably enjoyed his society all the more that
the Viennese gentlemen appeared to her singularly uninteresting.
She complained of them in her letters to the Grand Duchess of
Weimar, and also to Madame Récamier, and declared that she felt
the need of a summer at Coppet to indemnify her for the frivolous
monotony of the Austrian capital. She seems to have been in an
unusually depressed state of mind, and recurred perpetually to the
hardships of exile.
In April, 1808, shortly before starting again for Weimar, she
addressed a letter to her former friend, the ungrateful Talleyrand,
begging him to interest himself for the payment of the two millions
left by her father in the French Treasury. She alluded sadly, and at
some length, to all her sufferings again in this letter, and reminded
him that he wrote thirteen years previously to her from America, “If
I must remain even one year longer here I shall die.”
One is not much surprised to divine from subsequent
circumstances that this appeal produced no effect. Amiable, and
even pathetic as it was, Talleyrand was not the man to be moved by
it. Like Napoleon, to whom he perhaps showed it, he would be likely
to think that Madame de Staël’s “exile” was singularly mitigated. It is
one thing to be proscribed and banished, not only from one’s own
country but from friends and fortune; to wander, as so many
illustrious refugees have done, a lonely stranger in a foreign land,
not daring to invoke the protection of any authority, and constantly
eking out a miserable existence by teaching or worse. It is another
thing to be wealthy, influential, admired; to be the guest of
sovereigns, and the honored friend of the greatest minds in Europe;
to be surrounded with sympathy, and followed at every step by the
homage of a brilliant and cultured crowd. Such was the existence of
Madame de Staël. Her sorrows were great because her fiery
temperament rebelled against her grief, at the same time that her
great intellect fed it with lofty and lyric thoughts. But her sorrows
were of the affections exclusively. She never felt the sting of the
world’s scorn, nor knew the bitter days and sleepless nights of
poverty. If she ever “ate her bread with tears,” they were not those
saltest tears of all which are wrung from burning eyes by unachieved
hopes and frustrated endeavor. Every field of social and intellectual
activity was open to her except the salons of Paris, and those were
very different under the blight of Napoleonic bureaucracy from what
they had been even during the mingled vulgarity and ferment of the
Directory.
She returned to Weimar, and had a touching meeting with the
Grand Duchess, whose recent troubles, and the courage she
displayed under them, had not only endeared her to her subjects
and her friends, but had won the applause of the world. On her way
thither she presumably delayed a short while in Berlin, and it must
have been to that period that Ticknor refers when relating a very
amusing anecdote in his Life and Letters. She asked Fichte to give
her in a quarter of an hour a summarized idea of his famous Ego,
professing to be, as she doubtless was, entirely in the dark about it.
Fichte’s consternation may be imagined, for he had been all his life
developing his system, and intended it to comprehend the universe.
Moreover he spoke very bad French, and even if Madame de Staël
were momentarily silent in speech, we may fancy how voluble she
looked, and how nervous the prescience of her imminent rapid
speech must have made the philosopher. However, he made up his
mind to the attempt, and began. In a very few moments Madame de
Staël burst out:
“Ah! that is enough. I understand perfectly. Your system is
illustrated by a story in Munchausen’s travels.” Fichte’s expression at
this announcement was a study; but the lady went on: “He arrived
once on the banks of a wide river, where there was neither bridge
nor ferry, neither boat nor raft; and at first he was in despair. But an
idea struck him, and taking hold of his own sleeve, he jumped
himself over to the other side. Now, Monsieur Fichte, is not this
exactly what you have done with your Ego?”
This speech charmed everybody except Fichte himself, who never
forgave Madame de Staël, or at least so Ticknor’s informant said,
and it is easy to believe him.
During the remainder of 1808, and the whole of 1809 and 1810,
Madame de Staël remained alternately at Coppet and Geneva,
working steadily at the Allemagne. It was only about this time that
she acquired habits of sustained occupation. Her father had
entertained so strong and singular an objection to seeing her
engaged in writing, that, rather than pain him, she used to scribble
at odd hours and in casual positions—sometimes, for instance,
standing by the chimney-piece. In this way she was able to hide her
work as soon as he appeared, and thus spare him the annoyance of
supposing that he had interrupted her. She talked so continually that
it was a marvel how she ever wrote at all; and her friends used
often to wonder where and how she planned her works. But the
truth seems to have been that they sprang full grown from her
brain, after having been unconsciously developed there by perpetual
discussion.
During the years above mentioned society at Coppet, although
normally composed as of old by Schlegel, Sismondi, Constant (for a
time), Madame Récamier, and Bonstetten, was varied once more by
new and interesting visitors. Among these was Madame Le Brun,
who not only painted a portrait of Madame de Staël, but noted many
things which now afford pleasant glimpses of the life at the Château.
Of course, like everybody else who sojourned as a guest at Coppet,
she fell under the spell of the hostess. Byron himself some years
later recorded how much more charming Madame de Staël was in
her own house than out of it; and she seems to have possessed the
art of dispensing her hospitality, which was royal, with as much
grace as cordiality.