'"
Napoleon's hatred of her was intense. "Do not allow that jade, Madame de
Stael," he writes to Fouche, December 31, 1806 ('New Letters of Napoleon
I.', p. 35), "to come near Paris." Again, March 15, 1807 ('ibid.', p.
39), "You are not to allow Madame de Stael to come within forty leagues
of Paris. That wicked schemer ought to make up her mind to behave
herself at last." In a third letter, April 19, 1807 ('ibid.', p. 40), he
speaks of her as "paying court, one day to the great--a patriot, a
democrat, the next!... a fright, ... a worthless woman" (Leon Lecestre's
'Lettres inedites de Napoleon I'er', 2nd ed. vol. i. pp. 84, 88, 93).]
[Footnote 2:
"Old Gardner the bookseller employed Rolt and Smart to write a monthly
miscellany called the 'Universal Visitor'. There was a formal written
contract, which Allen the printer saw.... They were bound to write
nothing else; they were to have, I think, a third of the profits of
his sixpenny pamphlet; and the contract was for ninety-nine years"
(Boswell's 'Life of Dr. Johnson', ed. Birrell, vol. iii. p. 192).]
[Footnote 3:
"But first the Monarch, so polite,
Ask'd Mister Whitbread if he'd be a 'Knight'.
Unwilling in the list to be enroll'd,
Whitbread contemplated the Knights of 'Peg',
Then to his generous Sov'reign made a leg,
And said, 'He was afraid he was 'too old','" etc.
Peter Pindar's 'Instructions to a Laureat'.]
* * * * *
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