Nevertheless, her great wealth, and the high position of her father, attracted suitors, some of whom at least may not have overlooked the intellectual ability which she began very early to display.

There was talk of her marrying William Pitt, but either Pitt's well-known "dislike of the fair," or some other reason, foiled the project.

After one or two other negotiations she made a match which was not destined to good fortune, and which does not strike most observers as a very tempting one in any respect, though it carried with it some exceptional and rather eccentric guarantees for that position at court and in society on which Germaine was set.

The King of Sweden, Gustavus, whose family oddity had taken, among less excusable forms, that of a platonic devotion to Marie Antoinette, gave a sort of perpetual brevet of his ministry at Paris to the Baron de Stael-Holstein, a nobleman of little fortune and fair family.

This served, using clerical language, as his "title" to marriage with Germaine Necker.