It is very well known that M. Rocca, the second husband of Madame de Staël, "a man of high honor and of great intelligence" (Chateaubriand _really_ says so), was unable to survive her loss, and died shortly after her, it was admitted, through grief. The Duchess D'Abrantes says, upon this: "He was of an age when life still offered pleasure, the world glory; but, being hopeless of ever again finding so perfect a being to occupy his heart, he formed no other wish, after closing her eyes, than that of rejoining her. A woman thus loved must have been truly excellent." And, we will add, this love was entirely founded upon and maintained by her moral qualities, as she was then fifty years old and in failing health.
Madame Necker de Saussure observes, "Madame de Staël's goodness was thorough; her noble, generous heart rose to heroism when the interest of her friends, or even of her foes, demanded energy." This was proved by the numbers she saved and concealed during the terrors of the Revolution. In every part of Europe she was courted and esteemed by the best society, and, if time and our pages permitted, we could quote tributes to her merits from a long list of eminent men, whose superiority places them above the petty aim of depressing female genius by slandering the woman who has well won its laurels. To advert to a few of these memorials: Schlegel, who knew her intimately, said she was "Femme grande et magnanime jusque dans les replis de son âme," which is curiously echoed by the well-known verse, that might serve as a translation--
At the time of Madame de Staël's death, Lord Byron commented at length on the event in one of his notes to "Childe Harold." After expatiating on her merits as an author, he goes on--
"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. Some one should be found to portray the unaffected graces with which she adorned those dearer relationships, the performance of whose duties is rather discovered amongst the interior secrets, than seen in the outward management, of family intercourse; and which, indeed, it requires the delicacy of genuine affection to qualify for the eye of an indifferent spectator. Some one should be found, not to celebrate, but to describe, the amiable mistress of an open mansion, the centre of a society, ever varied, and always pleased, the creator of which, divested of the ambition and the arts of public rivalry, shone forth only to give fresh animation to those around her. The mother tenderly affectionate and tenderly beloved, the friend unboundedly generous, but still esteemed, the charitable patroness of all distress, cannot be forgotten by those whom she cherished, and protected, and fed. Her loss will be mourned the most where she was known the best; and, to the sorrows of very many friends and more dependents, may be offered the disinterested regret of a stranger, who, amidst the sublimer scenes of the Leman Lake, received his chief satisfaction from contemplating the engaging qualities of the incomparable Corinna."