Lauriston was the best educated of the aides de camp, and Napoleon often
conversed with him on such literary works as he chose to notice.
"He sent for me one day," said Lauriston, "when I was on duty at the
Palace of Lacken, and spoke to me of the decennial prizes, and the
tragedy of 'Carion de Nisas', and a novel by Madame de Stael, which he
had just read, but which I had not seen, and was therefore rather
embarrassed in replying to him. Respecting Madame de Stael and her
Delphine, he said some remarkable things. 'I do not like women,' he
observed, 'who make men of themselves, any more than I like effeminate
men. There is s proper part for every one to play in the world. What
does all this flight of imagination mean? What is the result of it?
Nothing. It is all sentimental metaphysics and disorder of the mind. I
cannot endure that woman; for one reason, that I cannot bear women who
make a set at me, and God knows how often she has tried to cajole me!'"

The words of Lauriston brought to my recollection the conversations I had
often had with Bonaparte respecting Madame de Stael, of whose advances
made to the First Consul, and even to the General of the Army of Italy,
I had frequently been witness. Bonaparte knew nothing at first of Madame
de Stael but that she was the daughter of M. Necker, a man for whom, as I
have already shown, he had very little esteem. Madame de Stael had not
been introduced to him, and knew nothing more of him than what fame had
published respecting the young conqueror of Italy, when she addressed to
him letters full of enthusiasm. Bonaparte read some passages of them to
me, and, laughing, said, "What do you think, Bourrienne, of these
extravagances. This woman is mad." I recollect that in one of her
letters Madame de Stael, among other things, told him that they certainly
were created for each other--that it was in consequence of an error in
human institutions that the quiet and gentle Josephine was united to his
fate--that nature seemed to have destined for the adoration of a hero