As she passed a bookstore, Georgiana saw police officers bustling in and out while quite a few people gathered at the entrance to watch.
Before Madame de Staël was exiled, she published an essay titled "On Germany," discussing why the attitude of people in France toward German literature was incorrect. It said this:
"In Germany, a writer forms his own public; in France, the public directs the writer. Because France has more people of intellectual cultivation than Germany, the public makes greater demands. German writers, meanwhile, are placed far above their critics, and thus rarely improve as a result of criticism."
Georgiana believed an orchestra could only have one conductor. Though many felt that an orchestra could perform from the score even without one, someone within the orchestra would not know whether his own instrument had already drowned out the rest.
Georgiana did not know whether Madame de Staël was truly French or German. As the beginning of her essay stated, the broad differences between the two peoples' ways of observing and feeling gave rise to confusion of the emotions.
As the daughter of the great banker Jacques Necker, she had been qualified to enter the royal court. After the French Revolution broke out, the assets under her father's name were frozen, and the two million Franc he had lent Louis XVI was difficult to recover. Madame de Staël's fees and royalties alone were likely insufficient to sustain a luxurious courtly life. Fortunately, sensing the turmoil in European politics, Necker had already invested part of his assets in America. That money became an extremely important financial safeguard for her.
She needed Paris badly, but Paris did not necessarily need her. In her article, she wrote, "People in France are more at fault than the Germans in judging before understanding the