Coppet

“ Standing in the long salon, which contains many portraits and souvenirs of the habitués of Coppet, we realized something of the life of those brilliant days, when the walls echoed to what Bonstettin called "prodigious outbursts of wit and learning," and upon whose boards classic dramas and original plays were acted, often very badly, by the learned guests. ”

“ 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 splendour 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." ”

“ She certainly liked to absorb a great deal of her friends' affections, and was avowedly displeased when they married. Her sentiments towards Baron de Staël, full of a sweet and fresh cordiality at first, seems rapidly to have changed to aversion. As far as it is possible to judge, she unhesitatingly sacrificed him on all occasions to her filial love or her intellectual aims. When he was in Paris she left him in order to console M. Necker in his mournful retirement at Coppet. When he was at Coppet she remained in Paris, there to form and electrify a constitutional salon. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Sismondi—the correct and censorious—dwells more especially on Byron's cynical contempt for appearances, and the conduct and companionship which had brought him into disrepute with the worthy Genevese.
Coppet had never been quite as brilliant, probably, as in this last summer that Madame de Staël was to reign there. The society was more varied in nationality than in the days when a brilliant but small band of intellects had gathered round to console her in her exile. ”

“ When misfortunes came, the blows that fell upon her husband struck with double force into her own heart. She was destined to share with him the chill of censure and neglect, the bitter sting of ingratitude, the lonely isolation of one fallen from a high place, whose friendship and whose favors count no more.
In the solitude of Coppet, where she died at fifty-seven, during the last and darkest days of the Revolution, perhaps she realized in the tireless devotion of her husband and the loving care of Mme. de Stael the repose of heart which the brilliant world of Paris never gave her. ”

“ Twice a day steamers leave Geneva to ascend the lake. It was a bright, summer afternoon when we embarked from the pier beyond our hotel, and steamed away past the villages that lie along its edge. Among them is Coppet, the home of Madame de Staël, the towers of which rise up behind the town. The deck of the steamer was alive with tourists. One party, from meeting at every turn, rests even yet in memory; the ladies stout, red-faced, and showily dressed, with immense "charms" pendent from their chatelaines—shovels, tongs, and pokers, life-size—the result of a sojourn at Geneva, doubtless. ”

“ But the individual will gradually disappear as the author is more distinctly seen; some one, therefore, of all those whom the charms of involuntary wit, and of easy hospitality, attracted within the friendly circles of Coppet, should rescue from oblivion those virtues which, although they are said to love the shade, are, in fact, more frequently chilled than excited by the domestic cares of private life. ”

“ Alas! the happy days at Coppet were numbered now for most of those whom we have seen congregating there through so many exciting summers.
Madame de Staël delighted in the exercise of a generous hospitality. Nobody ever seems to have managed her business affairs better than she did, and among the few apparent contradictions of her transparent nature was the spirit of order in which she dealt with life, as soon as the things presented to her consideration were hard facts and not sentiments. ”

“ 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 splendour 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. ”

“ This new interest of Madame de Staël in such questions was largely due to the ever-growing influence of Madame de Krüdener, now irrevocably "regenerate" and rapidly rising to fame as a priestess and prophetess, while leading a life of the utmost asceticism. She had been in Coppet again, and had left there the trail of her sacerdotal tendencies. Poor Bonstetten, daily growing younger in mind and heart, was comically disgusted at the change which was coming over the intellectual life of the Château. ”

“ We must not forget the scientific world where Madame Maria was no less at home than in fashionable literary cliques. The sisters saw something of Cuvier at Paris; in Switzerland they travelled with the Aragos. They were on their way to the Marcets at Geneva when they stopped at Coppet, where Miss Edgeworth was always specially happy in the society of Madame Auguste de Staël and Madame de Broglie. But Switzerland is not one of the places where human beings only are in the ascendant; other influences there are almost stronger than human ones. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bonstetten had said one day to her. "I would like to feel sure that you sometimes close your eyes, and are not always thinking." She had remained so bright and full of life to the last, that even Death's inexorable hand could not for many long years efface the recollection of her vivid personality.
In a page of the Mémoires d'Outre Tombe, Châteaubriand has left a description of a visit paid by himself and Madame Récamier to the grave at Coppet. It was fifteen years after Madame de Staël's death. ”

“ It is surely one of the ironies of fate that the Baron de Staël is only remembered to-day as the husband of a woman whom he seems to have looked upon as his social inferior. In this living room is a large portrait of M. Necker, indeed, no room is without a portrait or bust of the idolized father, and here, looking strangely modern among faces of the First Empire, is a charming group of the four daughters of the Count d'Haussonville, the present owner of Coppet. ”

“ The Coquette has never got a chase under her lee, that she did not speak.”
“I disparage no ship, sir, for character is character, and none should speak lightly of their fellow-creatures, and, least of all, of anything which follows the sea. I allow the Coquette to be a lively boat on a wind, and a real scudder going large; but one should know the wright that fashioned yonder brigantine, before he ventures to say that any vessel in Her Majesty’s fleet can hold way with her, when she is driven hard.” ”

“ Come, tell me!” said Coppinger scornfully.
“A fine, well-built girl, dark-haired, dark-eyed, with cheeks like apricots, lively in mood, with nimble tongue, good-natured, not bookish, not caring for brush or piano, but who can take a rough word and return it; who will not wince at an oath, and shrink away at coarse words flung about where she is. All these things you know very well must be encountered by your wife, in your house. Did you ever read ‘Hamlet,’ Captain Coppinger?” ”

“ They all came to her court, as is the business of young fellows, to tell her what love is, and she listened with a noble frankness, having, indeed, the friendliest face for all engaged in this pursuit that can ever have sat on woman. I have heard ladies call her coquette, not understanding that she shone softly upon all who entered the lists because, with the rarest intuition, she foresaw that they must go away broken men and already sympathised with their dear wounds. ”

“ Once or twice her flirtations had been on the verge, but Lady Amelie was one of those who can look very steadily over the brink but never fall in.
The world spoke well of her. "She was certainly a great coquette," people said, indulgently, but then she was so beautiful and so much admired. She smiles as she reads the fashionable intelligence; there is a paragraph describing her appearance at a ball given by one of the queens of society. The paper speaks of her beauty, her magnificent dress and costly jewels. ”

“ Let me entreat the fair Alida to take counsel of the apprehension I am sure she feels, and to persuade her uncle that the Coquette is safer than his periagua.”
“It is said to be easier to enter than to quit your ship,” returned the laughing Alida. “By certain symptoms that attended our passage to the island, your Coquette, like others, is fond of conquest. One is not safe beneath so malign an influence.”
“This is a reputation given by our enemies. I had hoped for a different answer from la belle Barbérie.” ”

“ Girard Let's renew our discussion and talk of Lisette again. Because, having so much power over her, being her neighbor, and a sort of surrogate parent, you are working hard to turn her into a coquette, instead of making her wiser.
Widow
Language of Paris. That's what will make her perfect.
Girard Some perfection! Alas, you make her worse, when you come here to refine her wit. You make her heart more false and more vain.
Widow At nine years, she was already a coquette in embryo. ”

“ The Lady Alcarda was beautiful, gifted, pure of heart and soul, lofty and spiritual—like you," he added, passionately, "and she accepted the poet's service—she made him her knight."
"There are no knights in these days," she said, half sadly.
"Ah! let me prove to you that you are wrong. You are like Lady Alcarda. Let me be your knight. I would be content to serve you in all chivalry, and in all honor, until death, if you would reward me with a kind word and a smile."
His handsome young face looked so eager, so wistful, that the coquette's heart smote her for one half moment. ”

“ For that night Kipps wallowed in self-abandonment and Coote behaved as one who had received a great trust. That sinister passion for pedagogy to which the Good Intentioned are so fatally liable, that passion of infinite presumption that permits one weak human being to arrogate the direction of another weak human being's affairs, had Coote in its grip. He was to be a sort of lay confessor and director of Kipps, he was to help Kipps in a thousand ways, he was in fact to chaperon Kipps into the higher and better sort of English life. ”

“ I felt at the time she was asking me to be a good bird; but now that I have known you, sir, so long, and am better acquainted with the English language, I know she told me how much happier I should be if I were good. 'Oh fie, Cockatoo,' I think I hear her saying, 'how naughty of you to bite the captain's finger; you ought to be a good bird, sir,—and he is [Pg 54] so kind to you, and all the birds aboard.' It was all very well for Miss Maud to speak of the captain being good ”

“ Koppy broke into an insulting laugh. "You! And the trestle ain't all we want. Who pays for last night's deaths? You blow up the trestle! What about Mr. Conrad? You let him escape."
Werner saw difficulties accumulating beyond his oft-tried powers of evasion. He stammered a disconnected tale of bad luck, wiping his face repeatedly. Koppy waved it aside.
"Morani," he ordered solemnly, "watch him. If he tries to escape—" A swift downward stroke completed the command. "We'll settle with him later." ”

“ Copp generally chose to put herself into everybody's business, and especially into her own, the two ladies had to leave Captain Copp very much to his own society. Solitude is the time for reflection, we are told, and it may have been the cause of the captain's recurring again and again to the hint his mother had dropped in regard to Isaac Thornycroft. That there was nothing in it yet he fully assumed, and it might be as well to take precautions that nothing should be in it for the future. Prevention was better than cure. ”

“ You are an eagle—a bird of prey."
"A bird of prey," repeated Coppinger.
"And you soar and fight, and dive, and rend in your own element; whereas I am a little silver trout——"
"No"—he drew up his arm wound round with her hair—"No—a goldfish."
"Well, so be it; a goldfish swimming in my own crystal element, and happy in it. You would not take me out of it to gasp and die. Trust me, Captain Coppinger, I could not—even if I would—live in your world."
She put up her hands to his arm and drew some of the hair through his fingers, and unwound it from his sleeve. He made no resistance. ”

“ A Coquette seeks to fascinate for the sake of fascinating. Like a miser, she mistakes the means for the end, and feeds on one-sided passion and admiration, until one morning she wakes up and finds her beauty gone, and herself the most disappointed and unamiable of old maids. ”