He attempted to praise her sensibility, but it was easily perceived that personal regret mingled itself with this part of his speech.

He lamented the difficulty which a woman of her superior cast experienced of meeting with the object of which she has formed to herself an ideal portrait--a portrait clad with every endowment the heart and mind can wish for.

He however took pleasure in painting the passionate sensibility which the poetry of Corinne inspired, and the art she possessed of seizing every striking relation between the beauties of nature and the most intimate impressions of the soul.

He exalted the originality of Corinne's expressions, those expressions which were the offspring of her character and manner of feeling, without ever permitting any shade of affectation to disfigure a species of charm not only natural but involuntary.
He spoke of her eloquence as possessing an irresistible force and energy which must the more transport her hearers the more they possessed within themselves true intellectual sensibility.

"Corinne," said he, "is indubitably the most celebrated woman of our country, and nevertheless it is only her friends who can properly delineate her; for we must always have recourse, in some degree, to conjecture, in order to discover the genuine qualities of the soul.