It was a testimony of its power.

It felt itself king, by seeing courtiers bowing to it, and excused their rank by reason of their complaisance.
Madame de Staeel was seduced as much by the heart as the intellect of M.
de Narbonne.

Her masculine and sensitive imagination invested the young soldier with all she desired to find in him.

He was but a brilliant, active, high-couraged man; she pictured him a politician and a hero.

She magnified him with all the endowments of her dreams, in order to bring him up to her ideal standard.