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owerful appeals on these occasions for the morrow. Bonaparte could not tolerate this. His power was too recently gained--his projects too unripe. In vain did the friends of Mme de Staël say, that a salon could never be dangerous to a rule like his. 'It is not a salon,' said he; 'it is a club.' It was, in fact, the antagonism between mind and physical force. The First Consul had said before, of the orators of the Tribune: 'I have no time to answer these refractory speechifiers: they do nothing but perplex all things; they must be silenced.' And one great point of attack was Mme de Staël's salon. It was necessary she should abdicate her throne. A sentence of banishment condemned the brilliant lady to lay down the sceptre. Exiled to Geneva, surrounded by friends, sharing her father's lot, occupied with her daughter's education, she had, it may be thought, plenty of objects: she was unquestionably the first literary woman in Europe, too, and as such, Geneva was as her salon, where she received the homage of royalty and talent. Yet, a true Frenchwoman, unable to bear separation from the peculiar atmosphere in which she had been reared, she pined after it--pined still more for the friends who visited her only to be partakers of her exile; and so she passed the whole period of the Napoleon dynasty.
Meanwhile, in the interval between the banishment of Mme de Staël and her return, the most captivating mistress of a Paris salon appears to have been Mme de Beaumont. She was the daughter of M. de Montmorin, the minister of foreign affairs, who had immediately followed Necker. She married early, and not happily. She lived with her father, separated from her husband, and was intrusted to transcribe some of the very important correspondence between Mirabeau and the court. In the Reign of Terror, her father, and it is thought others of her family, fell by the guillotine; but she herself was spared, even against her will. She retired for awhile into the country, visiting among her friends,