274 MADAME DE STAEL AND NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. from a single volume of his letters of this period. From the fourteenth of October, 1806, to the ninth of July, 1807, Napoleon never relaxed his clutch upon the capital and dominions of the King of Prussia. On the ninth of July he granted peace to King Frederick William, on terms more severe, perhaps, than a conqueror has ever imposed upon a powerful state. The King was obliged to surrender more than half of his kingdom, and he was informed that the portion he retained was conceded to him only out of regard to the wishes of the Emperor of Russia. Napoleon, in fact, in the " Note " giving an out- line of the terms of peace which he was prepared to grant, expressly says that it is the " protection of the Emperor Alexander which causes the King of Prussia to reenter into the possession of a portion of his states." Two other slices were soon after severed from the Prussian dominions — the Duchy of Warsaw and the Duchy of Danzig; and the whole amount of money contributions wrung from the prostrate kingdom was four hundred and fifty million of francs. Prussia was further compelled to engage to pay for French garrisons in some of its for- tresses, and to furnish a contingent of troops to the Emperor in all future wars. This was the man whom Madame de Stael saw and understood in 1805, as well as we can in 1883. She had known him when he figured as a vain young soldier of the Republic, and discerned his true character even then. There was danger in such a woman. The conqueror felt it, and owned himself unable to cope with her by sending her to reside a hundred and twenty miles from Paris ! If she ventured to approach nearer, he wrote with his own hand (as we see in his published correspond- ence,) an order to his chief of police to make her keep her distance. " That she crow," he styles her in one of these fierce notes. " That bird of evil omen," he calls
