CHAPTER IVMADAME DE MONTOLIEU—DR. TISSOT

LAUSANNE, LOOKING EAST

The rest is silence; and the presumption is strong that these were actually the last words which sealed the estrangement. If it were not for Mademoiselle Curchod's subsequent attitude towards him, one would be bound to say that Gibbon behaved abominably. But, as we shall see presently, her resentment was not enduring. Perhaps she was aware of extenuating circumstances that we do not know of. Perhaps, in her heart of hearts, she was conscious of having spread her net to catch a husband who then seemed a very brilliant match to the daughter of the country clergyman.The letter of the friend who begged her not to advertise so clearly her desire to make herself agreeable to men would certainly lend some colour to the suggestion. At any rate, since she herself forgave Gibbon, it seems unfair for anyone else to press the case against him.

It was nearly twenty years later—in 1783—that Gibbon decided to make Lausanne his home.

A good deal of water had flowed under the bridge in the meantime. He had written, and published, half of his History; and that half had sufficed to make him famous. He had been an officer in the militia and a Member of Parliament. He had been a constant figure in fashionable society, and an occasional figure in literary society; a fellow-member with Charles James Fox of Boodle's, White's, and Brooks's; a fellow-member of the Literary Club with Johnson, Burke, Adam Smith, Oliver Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Sir Joseph Banks. He had held office in the department of the Board of Trade, and lost it at the time of the coalition between Fox and North. His applications for employment in the Diplomatic Service—whether as Secretary to the Embassy at Paris or as Minister Plenipotentiary at Berne—had been politely rejected. And he had become amiddle-aged bachelor whose income, unless supplemented by the emoluments of some public office, hardly sufficed for the demands of his social position.

In these circumstances it occurred to him to propose to his friend, M. Deyverdun—the same M. Deyverdun with whom Mademoiselle Curchod vowed that she had never flirted—that they should keep house together at Lausanne. M. Deyverdun, who was like himself a confirmed bachelor of moderate means, and had a larger house than he wanted, was delighted with the proposal. All Gibbon's friends and relatives told him that he was making a fool of himself; but he knew better. He sold all his property, except his library, and 'bade a long farewell to thefumum et opes strepitumque Romæ.' His first winter, as he puts it in his delightful style, 'was given to a general embrace without nice discrimination of persons and characters.' The comprehensive embrace completed, he settled down to work.

His life at Lausanne is faithfully mirrored in his letters, more particularly in his letters to Lord Sheffield. It was at once a luxurious and an industrious life. One fact which stands out clearly is that Gibbon took no exercise. He boasts that, ina period of five years, he never moved five miles from Lausanne; he apologizes for a corpulence which makes it absolutely impossible for him to cross the Great Saint Bernard; he admits that, when he entertained Mr. Fox, he did not go for walks with that statesman, but hired a guide to do so on his behalf. He also drank a great deal of Madeira and Malvoisie. His letters to Lord Sheffield are full of appeals for pipes of these exhilarating beverages. He declares that they are necessary for the preservation of his health, and appears to have persuaded himself that they were good for gout. The consequence was that he had several severe attacks of that distressing malady.

Gout or no gout, however, he freely enjoyed the relaxation of social intercourse. He was never tired of pointing out to his correspondents that, whereas in London he was nobody in particular, in Lausanne he was a leader of society. His position there was, in fact, similar in many ways to that of Voltaire at Geneva; though he differed from Voltaire in always keeping on good terms with all his neighbours. To be invited to his parties was no less a mark of distinction than it had been, a generation earlier, to be invited to the philosopher's parties at Ferney. One of the letters tells us howhe gave a ball, and stole away to bed at 2 a.m., leaving the young people, his guests, to keep it up till after sunrise. He also gave frequent dinners, and still more frequent card-parties. When the gout was very bad, he gave card-parties in his bedroom.

Distinguished strangers often came to see him, and gave Lausanne the tone of a fashionable resort. 'You talk of Lausanne,' he writes, 'as a place of retirement, yet, from the situation and freedom of the Pays de Vaud, all nations, and all extraordinary characters are astonished to meet each other. The Abbé Raynal, the great Gibbon, and Mercier, author of the "Tableau de Paris," have been in the same room. The other day the Prince and Princesse de Ligne, the Duke and Duchess d'Ursel, etc., came from Brussels on purpose to act a comedy.' And again: 'A few weeks ago, as I was walking on our terrace with M. Tissot, the celebrated physician; M. Mercier, the author of the "Tableau de Paris"; the Abbé Raynal; Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle Necker; the Abbé de Bourbon, a natural son of Lewis the Fifteenth; the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick, Prince Henry of Prussia, and a dozen Counts, Barons, and extraordinary persons,' etc.

From time to time he faced the question whether it would be well to marry. Madame Necker dissuaded him from the adventure on the ground that in order to marry happily it is necessary to marry young. It is not certain that her advice was disinterested, but it was good advice to give to a man who, after expressing his readiness to adopt 'some expedient, even the most desperate, to secure the domestic society of a female companion,' summed up his sentiments upon the subject in this candid language:

'I am not in love with any of the hyænas of Lausanne, though there are some who keep their claws tolerably well pared. Sometimes, in a solitary mood, I have fancied myself married to one or another of those whose society and conversation are the most pleasing to me; but when I have painted in my fancy all the probable consequences of such a union, I have started from my dream, rejoiced in my escape, and ejaculated a thanksgiving that I was still in possession of my natural freedom.'

THE MARKET-PLACE, LAUSANNE

This, however, was not written until after the History was finished. Gibbon never felt the need of a female companion so long as he had his work to occupy him. The fact that he began to feel itacutely as soon as ever the work was done gives an added pathos to this, the most famous and the most frequently quoted passage of his memoirs:

'I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in aberceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all Nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.'

The life of the historian was, in fact, destined to last only for another six years—years in which he sometimes was desperately anxious to relieve hisloneliness, aggravated by the death of Deyverdun, by seeking 'the domestic society of a female companion,' but inclined, on the whole, to the opinion encouraged by Madame Necker, that the remedy would be worse than the disease. We probably shall not be wrong in conjecturing that the pleasure which he derived from Madame Necker's correspondence and society assisted him in coming to this decision. At any rate, we must admit that there are few literary romances more remarkable than this story, of the renewal of love some thirty years or so after a lovers' quarrel.

The lovers parted, as we have seen, with high-strung feelings—at least upon the lady's side. They met again soon after Mademoiselle Curchod had accepted the heart and hand of Jacques Necker, the rich Parisian banker, destined to become Louis XVI.'s Minister of Finance. Gibbon, coming to Paris, called, and was well received. We have accounts of the visit from both of them. Madame Necker says that her vanity was flattered because Gibbon appeared to be dazzled by the contemplation of her wealth. Gibbon complains that he was not taken very seriously, that M. Necker invited him to supper every evening, and went to bed, leaving him alone with his wife. The philosopherBalzac would have called him a fool, and classed him with theprédestinés; but it does not appear that scandal, or occasion for scandal, or anything worse than the interchange of sentimentalpersiflage, resulted.

A gap in the history of their friendship follows, but in 1776 we find the Neckers visiting Gibbon in Bentinck Street. Gibbon writes patronizingly of the husband as 'a sensible, good-natured creature,' and of the wife he says: 'I live with her just as I used to do twenty years ago, laugh at her Paris varnish, and oblige her to become a simple, reasonable Suissesse.'

We need not interpret this statementau pied de la lettre, but the visit certainly marks a stage in the story of their intimacy. Gibbon went to see the Neckers in Paris in the following year, and after his return to London Madame du Deffand told him how she had talked to Madame Necker about him. 'We talked of M. Gibbon. Of what else? Of M. Gibbon—continually of M. Gibbon.' And Madame Necker herself wrote, at about the same time, with reference to the publication of the first volumes of 'The Decline and Fall':

'Wherever I go your books shall follow me, and give me pleasure and happiness. If you write, too,your letters will be welcome and appreciated. If you do not write ... but I refuse to contemplate this painful possibility.'

Gibbon's migration to Lausanne and the Neckers' purchase of their famous country seat at Coppet united them by still closer ties, and one cannot help noticing that at this period of their lives—when they were both something over fifty years of age—Madame Necker's letters to Gibbon became at once more frequent and more affectionate. Some of those letters, indeed, can only be distinguished from love-letters by reading into them our knowledge of Madame Necker's reputation for propriety. We have seen her dissuading Gibbon from marriage on the ground that to marry late is to marry unhappily. Another reason which she gives is that 'without a miracle it would be impossible to find a woman worthy of you.' Of a contemplated visit to Lausanne she says: 'I am looking forward with a delightful sentiment to the day I am to pass with you.' And afterwards:

'Returning here, and finding only the tombs of those I loved so well, I found you, as it were, a solitary tree whose shade still covers the desert which separates me from the first years of my life.'

And in another letter, more sentimental still, we read:

'Come back to us when you are free. The moment of your leisure ought always to belong to her who has beenyour first love and your last. I cannot make up my mind which of these titles is the sweeter and the dearer to my heart.'

What are we to make of it all? Nothing, assuredly, that entitles us to cast a stone at Madame Necker, or to express for her husband a pity which he never felt for himself. Yet one imagines that after M. Necker, who kept such early hours, had retired to his well-earned repose, there must sometimes have been certain sentimental communings, in which the old note ofpersiflagewas no longer to be heard. One listens in fancy to the regrets of these two who never forgot that they had once been lovers—regrets, no doubt, not openly expressed, but only coyly hinted—for the things that might have been.

The regrets, we may take it, were tempered by the lurking consciousness that things were really better as they were. The lovers must have known that, if they had married on nothing a year, the one would never have written his history and the other would never have had her salon, but theywould have been two struggling nonentities whom the world would never have heard of. They must have felt, too, that the success in life which they had achieved separately, but could not possibly have achieved together, had meant much to them: that in winning it they had fulfilled their destinies; that their tempers would have soured if they had had to live without it. All this they must have admitted to themselves, and even in their most candid moments, to each other. And yet—and yet——

LA TOUR DE HALDIMAND, OUCHY, LAUSANNE

To us, as we look backwards, Gibbon in Lausanne society figures as a Triton among the minnows, but to his contemporaries he probably seemed less important. He certainly did to his contemporaries in London. Boswell, as we all know, considered him the intellectual inferior of Dr. Johnson; and there is the story of the Duke of St. Albans accepting a presentation copy of his 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' with the genial remark, 'Hallo! Another two d——d thick volumes! Always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon!' No one in Lausanne took quite such a Philistine tone as that, but it is doubtful whether even Lausanne would have voted him a higher position than that ofPrimus inter pares. Lausanne, after all, had its native notables, and was too near to its celebrities to see them in their true perspective. It had, among others, Madame de Montolieu.

She was a beauty as well as a woman of letters, and Gibbon himself admired her in both capacities. He wrote to Lord Sheffield that there was 'danger' for him, and he was in danger of making himself ridiculous if of nothing worse. The story is told that he fell upon his knees to make a declaration of love to Madame Montolieu, and being too fat to rise without assistance, had to be helped to his feet by a domestic servant summoned for the purpose. He bore no malice, however, but even persuaded the lady to publish a novel which she had written 'to amuse an aged relative,' offering, when she objected, to attest his belief in its merits by printing it under his own signature.

The novel in question was 'Caroline de Lichtfield,' which has passed through many editions—the first in 1786 and the last in 1846—and been translated into English. Its enthusiastic reception launched its author upon a career. Her collected works, including a French translation of 'The Swiss Family Robinson,' fill 105 volumes; and a host of imitators arose. 'Well! are they still turning out novels at Lausanne?' was one of the questions that Napoleon asked the Council of the Helvetian Republic; and Louis Bridel, brother of the more famous Doyen Bridel, writing in 1787, drew a graphic picture ofthe Lausanne ladies, all with one accord engaged in literary toil:

'The romance of "Caroline," and the renown which it has brought its author, has caused such a ferment in our feminine heads that, jealous of the reputation of one of their number, they cover an incredible quantity of paper with ink. They pass their days in writing novels; their toilette tables are no longer covered with chiffons, but with sheets of notepaper; and, if one unfolds a curlpaper, one is sure to find that it is a fragment of a love-letter, or of a romantic description.'

Madame de Charrière, a rival craftswoman of whom we shall have to speak, the author of 'Lettres de Lausanne,' did not like Madame de Montolieu. She called her a 'provincial coquette,' and ridiculed her 'pretentions,' maintaining that, though her countrymen were attracted by her charms, 'the English who boarded with her stepfather considered her a disgustingly dirty and untidy person.' But Gibbon, who was not only English but a man of taste, thought otherwise, as we have seen; and his judgment may be accepted as the less prejudiced of the two. And Madame de Montolieu's literary success, at any rate, is not to be disputed. She lived to be an octogenarian,and retained her popularity until the last.[4]She and her only child, dying simultaneously, were buried in the same grave, on which may be read the inscription, 'Here I am, O Lord, with the son whom Thou hast given me!'

Dr. Tissot, whom we have already met on the Terrace at Lausanne, is another celebrity of the period who merits further mention. He and Gibbon once danced a minuet together at an evening party—a penalty imposed upon them in a game of 'forfeits.' They thus, says Tissot's German biographer, Eynard, 'revived the innocent pleasures of Arcadia of old'; but the great physician, is less famous for the way in which he took his pleasures than for the way in which he did his work. Tronchin of Geneva had been the medical attendant of the cosmopolitan aristocracy, had anticipated Rousseau in exhorting mothers to nurse their own children, and had ventured, with a rude hand, to open the windows of the Palace of Versailles. Tissot of Lausanne aspired to be the medical adviser of the common people. 'While,' he wrote, 'we are attending the most brilliant portion of humanity in the cities, the most usefulmembers of society are perishing miserably in the country villages.'

Obviously, he could not do much personally to cure the ailments of a scattered rural population; but he did what he might to help them by writing popular manuals of hygiene. Some of his advice is not even now out of date. He denounced the vice of overfeeding the delicate: 'The more one loves an invalid, the more one tries to make him eat; and that is to kill him with kindness.' He also spoke vigorous words against excessive tea-drinking:

'These teapots full of hot water which I find on people's tables remind me of the box of Pandora from which all evils issued—but with this difference, that they do not even leave hope behind, but, being a cause of hypochondria, disseminate melancholy and despair.'

These excellent pamphlets brought Tissot fame and the friendship of the great. Joseph II. offered him a medical chair at the University of Padua, which he occupied for two years. He was offered, but did not accept, the posts of physician at the Courts of Hanover and Poland. The Prince of Wurtemberg—he whom Rousseau addressed in the famous letter beginning 'If I had had the misfortune to be born a Prince'—settled at Lausannein order to be near him; and many interesting people sought his advice by correspondence. In particular a certain young gunner wrote from Ajaccio to ask what his uncle, an Archdeacon, had better take for the gout. The orthography is curious: 'S'il asseie de remuer les genoux, des douleurs égus lui font cesser son accion.' The signature is 'Buonaparte,Officier au régiment de la Fère.'

LAUSANNE FROM THE SIGNAL

Next, though they do not become interesting until a somewhat later date, we may mention the Constants: Rosalie de Constant, the witty little hunchback whose sentimental correspondence with Bernardin de Saint-Pierre has recently been published, and her more famous cousin, Benjamin Constant de Rebecque, the story of whose love for Madame de Staël has recently been revived.[5]That is another story which will be here in its proper place.

Benjamin was a man of many love-affairs; 'Constant the inconstant' was the name that women called him by. He was the son of a Swiss soldier of fortune, and had a cosmopolitan education at Oxford and Edinburgh, in Belgium and in Germany. In his youth he held the post of Chamberlain at the Court of Brunswick, where he acquired distingishedmanners. He was brilliant, though shallow, and there was something Wertheresque about him.

Born in 1767, he was married, in 1789, to the ugliest of the Duchess of Brunswick's maids of honour. He said afterwards that he had married her for no particular reason that he could remember, but that his reasons for divorcing her were clear enough. After his separation from her, he consoled himself by an intrigue with Madame de Charrière—a Dutch lady, married to a Switzer, residing at Colombier, near Neuchâtel, and known as the authoress of several sentimental novels. It was an affair that could hardly have lasted long in any case, seeing that the lady was twenty-seven years older than her lover. As a matter of fact it came to a quick end when the lover met Madame de Staël.

The details of that meeting are curious. Being at Lausanne, Benjamin Constant set out to call on Madame de Staël at Coppet. His relatives already knew, and he was interested to make her acquaintance. It happened that he met Madame de Staël on the road, driving from Coppet to Lausanne. He stopped the carriage and introduced himself. She invited him to get in, and drove him back. Finding his company agreeable,she pressed him to stay to supper with her. He did so, and was farther rewarded by an invitation to breakfast with his hostess on the following morning.

It was to Madame de Charrière herself that Benjamin Constant first confided the impression that Madame de Staël had made upon him.

'It is the most interesting acquaintance that I have ever made,' he wrote. 'Seldom have I seen such a combination of alluring and dazzling qualities, such brilliance, and such good sense, a friendliness so expansive and so cultivated, such generosity of sentiment, and such gentle courtesy. She is the second woman I have met for whom I could have counted the world well lost—you know who was the first. She is, in fact, a being apart—a superior being, such as one meets but once in a century.'

Having read that, Madame de Charrière knew that she had passed for ever out of Benjamin Constant's life. His own writings give us a glimpse of the early days of the new intimacy. Two passages from his diary, the second supplementing the first, supply the picture. Thus we read, on one day:

'I had agreed with Madame de Staël that, in order to avoid compromising her, I should never stay with her later than midnight. Whatever thecharm of her conversation, and however passionate my desire for something more than her conversation, I had to submit to this rule. But this evening, the time having passed more quickly than usual, I pulled out my watch to demonstrate that it was not yet time for me to go. But the inexorable minute-hand having deceived me, in a moment of childish anger I flung the instrument of my condemnation on the floor and broke it. "How silly you are!" Madame de Staël exclaimed. But what a smile I perceived shining through her reproaches! Decidedly my broken watch will do me a good turn.'

And the next day we find the entry:

'I have not bought myself a new watch. I do not need one any more.'

For a time the affair proceeded satisfactorily, no serious cloud appearing on the horizon until the death of M. de Staël. Then, of course, Madame de Staël was free to marry her lover, and Benjamin Constant proposed that she should do so. But she would not. One reason was that she did not wish to change a name that her writings had made famous; another, and perhaps a weightier one, that, though she loved Benjamin, she had no confidence in him—'Constant the inconstant' was inconstantstill. Though he loved Madame de Staël, he loved other women too. His intimacy with Madame Talma, the actor's wife, was notorious, and was not the only intimacy of the kind with which rumour credited him. Altogether, he was not the sort of man whom any woman could marry with any certainty that he would make her happy.

So Madame de Staël refused to marry Benjamin Constant, and with her refusal their relations entered upon a fresh and interesting phase. Henceforward the story is one of subsiding passion on his part, and very desperate efforts on hers to fan the dying embers of his desire. Again and again he tried to break with her; again and again she overwhelmed him with her reproaches, and brought him back, a penitent slave, suing for the renewal of her favour. The time when these things happened was the time when her salon at Coppet was at the zenith of its renown. The story is told for us by Benjamin Constant himself, in his 'Journal Intime,' a diary not written for publication, but published, long after his death, in theRevue Internationale,[6]in 1887.

The tone, at first, is that of a man whom lassitude has overtaken after elegant debauchery.Benjamin Constant is only thirty-seven, yet he already feels himself an old man, whose powers are failing, who is no longer capable of strong emotion, or even of taking an intelligent interest in life. He writes, in fact, as if he were very tired. When something happens to remind him of his old attachment to Madame de Charrière, he writes thus:

'It is seven years since I saw her—ten since our intimacy ended. How easily I then used to break every tie that bored me! How confident I was that I could always form others when I pleased! How clearly I felt that my life was mine to do what I liked with, and what a difference ten years have made! Now everything seems precarious, and ready to fly away from me. Even the privileges that I have do not make me happy. But I have passed the age of giving up anything, because I feel that I am powerless to replace anything.'

IN THE FOREST OF SAUVABELIN, ABOVE LAUSANNE

He describes—sometimes with a languid resignation, and sometimes with a peevish resentment—Madame de Staël's repeated endeavours to drag him, a more or less reluctant victim, at her chariot wheels. This is a very typical entry:

'A lively supper with the Prince de Belmonte. Left alone with Madame de Staël. The storm gradually rises. A fearful scene, lasting till threeo'clock in the morning—on my lack of sensibility, my untrustworthiness, the failure of my actions to correspond with my sentiments. Alas! I would be glad to escape from monotonous lamentations, not over real calamities, but upon the universal laws of nature, and upon the advent of old age. I should be glad if she would not ask me for love after aliaisonof ten years' standing, at a time when we are both nearly forty years old, and after I have declared, times out of number, that I have no longer any love to give her. It is a declaration which I have never withdrawn, except for the purpose of calming storms of passion which frightened me.'

So is this:

'A letter from Madame de Staël, who finds my letters melancholy, and asks what it is that I require to make me happy. Alas! what I require is my liberty, and that is precisely what I am not allowed to have. I am reminded of the story of the hussar who took an interest in the prisoner whom he had to put to death, and said to him: "Ask me any favour you like, except to spare your life."'

And this:

'A fearful scene this evening with Madame deStaël. I announce my intention of leaving her definitely. A second scene follows. Frenzy: reconciliation impossible; departure difficult. I must go away and get married.'

And this:

'Madame de Staël has won me back to her again.'

Until, finally, their relations gradually going from bad to worse, we reach this striking piece of eloquence:

'Yes, certainly I am more anxious than ever to break it off. She is the most egoistical, the most excitable, the most ungrateful, the most vain, and the most vindictive of women. Why didn't I break it off long ago? She is odious and intolerable to me. I must have done with her or die. She is more volcanic than all the volcanoes in the world put together. She is like an oldprocureur, with serpents in her hair, demanding the fulfilment of a contract in Alexandrine verse.'

It was in marriage that Benjamin Constant gradually decided to seek a haven of refuge from these tempestuous passions. But, though he is continually touching on the subject in his diary, he generally refers to it without enthusiasm. Marriage is 'necessary' for him, but there are objections toevery particular marriage that suggests itself. Sometimes the objections are expressed in general terms:

'Went to a party, where I met several agreeable women. But I am very unfortunate. In the women whom I might be able and willing to marry there is always a something that does not suit me. Meanwhile my life advances.'

Sometimes the objections are particularized:

'Trip to Geneva; called on the Mesdemoiselles de Sellon; saw Amélie Fabry again. She is as dark as ever, as lively as ever, as wide awake as ever. How I should have hated her, if they had succeeded in making me marry her! Yet she is really a very amiable girl. But I am always unfortunate in finding some insuperable objection in every woman whom I think of marrying. Madame de Hardenberg was tiresome and romantic; Mrs. Lindsay was forty, and had two illegitimate children. Madame de Staël, who understands me better than anyone else does, will not be satisfied with my friendship when I can no longer give her my love. This poor Amélie, who would like me to marry her, is thirty-two, and portionless, and has ridiculous mannerisms, which become more accentuated as she grows older. Antoinette, who is twenty,well off, and not particularly ridiculous, is such a common little thing to look at.'

But Benjamin Constant finally decided to marry Madame Dutertre.[7]He bought her from her husband, who, for a sum of money, was willing to divorce her; but it was not without a violent struggle that he tore himself away from Madame de Staël. Let us trace the story of the struggle in his diary. Madame Dutertre was an old friend:

'Called on Madame Dutertre, who has improved wonderfully in appearance. I made advances which she did not repel. The citadel is to fall to-night. Two years' resistance is quite long enough.

'Off to the country with Charlotte. She is an angel. I love her better every day. She is so sweet, so amiable. What a fool I was to refuse to have anything to do with her twelve years ago! What mad passion for independence drove me to put my neck under the foot of the most imperious woman in the world!

'We are back in Paris. Joyous days; delights of love. What the devil is the meaning of it? It is twelve years since I last felt a similar emotion.This woman, whom I have refused a hundred times, who has always loved me, whom I have sent away, whom I left eighteen months ago—this woman now turns my head. Evidently the contrast with Madame de Staël is the cause of it all. The contrast of her impetuosity, her egoism, and her continual preoccupation with herself, with the gentleness, the calm, the humble and modest bearing of Charlotte, makes the latter a thousand times more dear to me. I am tired of theman-womanwhose iron hand has for ten years held me fast, when I have a really womanly woman to intoxicate and enchant me. If I can marry her, I shall not hesitate. Everything depends on the line M. Dutertre takes.'

M. Dutertre, as has been stated, took the line of offering to consent to a divorce provided it were made worth his while to do so. Madame de Staël was more difficult to deal with. The first entry which gives us a glimpse of her feelings is as follows:

'Madame de Staël is back; she will not hear of our relations being broken off. The best way will be not to see her again, but to wait at Lausanne for orders from Charlotte—my good angel whom I bless for saving me. Schlegel writes that Madamede Staël declares that, if I leave her, she will kill herself. I don't believe a word of it.'

Followed by:

'Unhappy fool that I am; weakness overcomes me; I start for Coppet. Tenderness, despair, and then the trump card, "I shall kill myself."'

He fled to Lausanne, but—

'What was the good of coming here? Madame de Staël has come after me, and all my plans are upset. In the evening there was a fearful scene, lasting till five o'clock in the morning. I am violent, and put myself in the wrong. But, my poor Charlotte, I will not forsake you.'

Yet he had hardly written these lines when he was false to them. Madame de Staël came a second time to Lausanne to fetch him, and we read:

'She came; she threw herself at my feet; she raised frightful cries of pain and desolation. A heart of iron would not have resisted. I am back at Coppet with her. I have promised to stay six weeks, and Charlotte is expecting me at the end of the month. My God! what am I to do? I am trampling my future happiness under my feet....

'I receive a letter from Charlotte, who is more loving and more sure of me than ever. Would sheforgive me if she knew where I am and what I am doing? How slowly the time passes! Into what an abysm have I not hurled myself! Last night we had a dreadful scene. Shall I ever get out of it all alive? I have to pass my time in falsehood and deceptions in order to avoid the furious outbreaks which so terrify me. If it were not for the hopes which I build upon Madame de Staël's approaching departure to Vienna, this life would be unbearable. To console myself I spend my time in picturing how things will go if they go well. This is my Castle in Spain. Charlotte finishes her arrangements, and makes her preparations secretly. Madame de Staël, suspecting nothing, sets out for Vienna. I marry Charlotte, and we pass the winter pleasantly at Lausanne.'

CHÂTEAU DE BLONAY

Though this was not exactly how things happened, the marriage was nevertheless speedily and safely celebrated. But alas! poor Benjamin! It was now his turn, in the midst of his domestic bliss, to feel the pangs of unrequited love. Having fled from Madame de Staël, he sighed for her. His diary is full of his regrets. It is:

'Charlotte is good and sweet. I build myself foolish ideals, and throw the blame of my own folly upon others. At bottom Charlotte is what womenalways are. I have blamed individuals where I ought to have blamed the species. But for my work, and for the good advice that I need, I regret Madame de Staël more than ever.'

Or it is:

'A letter from Madame de Staël, from which I gather that, this time, all is really over between us. So be it. It is my own doing. I must steer my course alone, but I must take care not to fetter myself with other ties which would be infinitely less agreeable.'

Or again:

'I have lost Madame de Staël, and I shall never recover from the blow.'

And the truth was, indeed, that Madame de Staël had ceased to care, and that another had succeeded to Benjamin Constant's place in her heart.

His name was Albert de Rocca, and he was a young French officer who had been wounded in the Spanish wars. His personal beauty was such that a Spanish woman, finding him left for dead upon a battle-field, had taken him home with her, and nursed him back to health, saying that it was a pity that such a beautiful young man should die. His age was twenty-three, and Madame de Staël'swas forty-five. But the affection that sprang up between them was deep and genuine. 'I will love her,' he said, 'so dearly that she will end by marrying me.' And when she protested that she was old enough to be his mother, he answered that the mention of that word only gave him a further reason for loving her. 'He is fascinated,' Baron de Voght wrote, 'by his relations with Madame de Staël, and the tears of his father cannot induce him to abandon it.'

So she married him, though, for reasons of her own, she insisted that the marriage should be kept a secret. It seemed to her that a young husband would make her ridiculous, but that a young lover would not; very possibly she was right according to the moral standard of the age. At any rate her husband posed as her lover, and in that capacity quarrelled with Constant, with whom he nearly fought a duel, and travelled with her to Russia, to Sweden, and to England, and lived with her in Paris and at Coppet. But it was at this period, when her fame was at its zenith, that Madame de Staël wrote: 'Fame is for women only a splendid mourning for happiness.'

But the end was drawing near. Madame de Staël had lived all her life at high pressure, and herhealth was undermined. A lingering illness, of which the fatal issue was foreseen, overtook her. She struggled against it, declaring that she would live for Rocca's sake. But all in vain. She died in Paris in 1817. Rocca himself, who only survived her a few months, was too ill to be with her. Benjamin Constant spent a night of mourning in her death-chamber. They buried her at Coppet amid general lamentations.

At Lausanne, as at Geneva, the thunders of the French Revolution echoed. Gibbon heard them, and was alarmed, as if at the approach of the end of the world. The patriots of Vaud heard them, and rejoiced at the hope of a new era about to be begun. Their Excellencies of Berne felt the edifice of their dominion crumbling about their ears. The burghers of Morges began the trouble by disinterring from their archives an old charter, on the strength of which they refused to pay for the mending of the roads, while a pastor named Martin exhorted his congregation to withhold the tithe that was levied on potatoes. Then a fête was held at Rolle to celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, and 6,000 Bernese invaded the country, arrested the ringleaders, and compelled the magistrates to swear allegiance at the point of the bayonet. César Laharpe and J. J. Cart appealed to the French to intervene.

At first the French hesitated. Robespierre was not ambitious of foreign conquests, having his hands full enough at home, but the Directorate took larger views. Switzerland was reputed to be rich—andwas für plunder! A division of the army of Italy crossed the lake on January 28, 1798, and took possession of Lausanne. For a space there was civil war. Vaudois volunteers fought under their green flag, while a certain Loyal Legion, under Colonel de Rovéreaz, distinguished itself at Fraubrunnen, in defence of Berne. The French, however, were so much stronger than the Bernese that the issue could not long remain in doubt. It was the Swiss money that the French wanted, and the gold found in the vaults of the Treasury of Berne was carried off to Paris, while the Canton of Vaud was accorded a new and independent constitution.

THE RHONE VALLEY FROM MONT PELERIN

There were other revolutions, and revisions, and reconstructions to follow. When the Holy Alliance remodelled the map of Europe in 1815, the fate of Vaud, like that of so many other minor nationalities, hung in the balance. The Bernese fully expected to be allowed to re-establish their dominion; but Alexander I., prompted by Laharpe, prevented them. 'You have done a great deal forme,' the Emperor is reported to have said to the Liberator. 'What can I do for you?' And the Liberator's answer was: 'Sire, all that I ask is permission to speak to your Majesty of my country whenever I wish.' He spoke in 1815, and the Emperor listened; and the claims of Berne were rejected; and Laharpe took a house at Lausanne, and looked down on the scene of his triumphs, and fought his battles over again, and frequented Madame de Staël, whom in more stormy days he had written of as 'une infernale gueuse,' and was reverenced by all as the 'Grand Old Man' of the Canton.

There were further political changes in 1830, in 1845, and in 1861; but of these we need not speak. Their interest is no more than local. What the English traveller chiefly sees in the Lausanne of the nineteenth century is an increasing English colony, and the loudly vaunted educational facilities.

Of the English colony there is not perhaps a great deal to be said, except that it fills two churches on Sundays, and at all times monopolizes the Ouchy road. It has never consisted of distinguished persons like the English colony at Florence; on the other hand, it has never included so large a proportion of disreputable persons as the English colonies at Brussels and Boulogne. Gibbon cannot be said to have belonged to it, since, in his day, it did not yet exist; and it can hardly claim Dickens, since his sojourn there was of comparatively brief duration. In the main it is composed of very young and rather elderly members of the respectable middle classes. There is an English club, and there are opportunities of playing bridge. The life is inexpensive, not because commodities are specially cheap, but because there are no wealthy residents to set extravagant standards. A smallincome goes a long way there; and the climate is salubrious for all those whose bronchial tubes are in a condition to resist thebise.

These are conditions which please a great many people—notably the wandering spinsters who 'live in their boxes,' and the retired officers and civil servants who have to subsist upon their pensions. At Lausanne they can economize without feeling the pinch of poverty, and without feeling envious—or perceiving that their wives feel envious—of more prosperous neighbours. The sunshine costs nothing, and the amusements cost very little; they can go about in knickerbockers and wear out their old clothes without fearing that their solvency will be suspected. There is no need for them to learn a foreign tongue, since they form their own society, and mix very little with the Swiss who accept them, but do not pretend to like them. They live lazily, but healthily, and, on the whole, contentedly.

Of course, there is another side to the medal, and a price to be paid for the advantages. The colonists are exiles who have severed old ties, and have a difficulty in forming new ones. Their existence is rather animal than human, and rather vegetable than animal. They lose their energy and their intelligence; they are like plants no longergrowing in a garden, but uprooted and flung upon the grass. A stranger finds it difficult to converse with them, and fancies that they must be terribly bored. Perhaps they are; but perhaps, too, it is better to be bored in the sunshine than busy in a London fog. So they linger on, persuading themselves that they do so for their children's sake rather than their own, and referring the stranger, if he happens to question them, to the wonderful educational advantages of the town.

But what is the sober truth about those educational advantages? That is another branch of the subject which seems to be worth a passing word.

Assuredly the Swiss have a great reputation as educators, and that reputation stands nowhere higher than in the Canton of Vaud. Yverdon is in the Canton of Vaud, and it was there that Pestalozzi kept his school. Moreover, just as it has been said that every citizen of Ticino is by nature a hotel-keeper, so it has been said that every citizen of Vaud is by nature a professor. Professors, as we have already seen, were among the Canton's chief 'articles of export' during the Bernese domination, and kings preferred the Vaudois professors to any others. Yet a sufficient number of professors—and perhaps the best of them—havealways remained behind, so that teaching and learning have continued to be great native industries. The question which is left is, How do the Swiss systems of education compare with ours?

The answer is commonplace, and sounds platitudinous: they are better than ours in some respects, and inferior in others. Let us elaborate and particularize.

Scholarship, in the accepted English sense of the word, hardly exists in Switzerland. A Swiss Jebb is almost unthinkable, and if anyone proposes to find a Swiss Bentley in Casaubon, the answer must be that Casaubon was not really Swiss, though he was, for a time, a professor at Geneva. In the matter of the classics the German scholars have always been more learned than the Swiss, and the English scholars have always been both more learned and more graceful; indeed, in the sort of scholarship which enables a man to speak and write his own language properly the Swiss have always been sadly to seek. Swiss French is atrocious, and the French of Lausanne, though a shade better than that of Fribourg, is worse than that of Geneva or Neuchâtel. When the French themselves wish to say that a man's style is clumsy, they liken it to 'a Swiss translation from the Belgian.'

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