Both were kind, charitable, and munificent, and therefore
beloved; both were sarcastic, careless, and daring, and therefore
feared. The morality of Madame de Stael was by far the most faulty,
but so was the society to which she belonged; so were the general
manners of those by whom she was encircled."
There is one real point of similarity between Madame de Stael and
Mrs. Piozzi, which has been omitted in the parallel. Both were
treated much in the same manner by the amiable, sensitive, and
unsophisticated Fanny Burney. In Feb. 1793, she wrote to her father,
then at Paris, to announce her intimacy with a small "colony" of
distinguished emigrants settled at Richmond, the cynosure of which
was the far-famed daughter of Necker. He writes to caution her on the
strength of a suspicious _liaison_ with M. de Narbonne. She replies
by declaring her belief that the charge is a gross calumny. "Indeed,
I think you could not spend a day with them and not see that their
commerce is that of pure, but exalted and most elegant, friendship. I
would, nevertheless, give the world to avoid being a guest under
their roof, now that I have heard even the shadow of such a rumour."
If Mr. Croker was right, she was then in her forty-second year; at
all events, no tender, timid, delicate maiden, ready to start at a
hint or semblance of impropriety; and she waved her scruples without
hesitation when they stood in the way of her intercourse with M.
D'Arblay, whom she married in July 1793, he being then employed in
transcribing Madame de Stael's Essay on the Influence of the
Passions.
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