* De Staël and Villers got along famously at first in agreement on mysticism as well as philosophy. She welcomed mystics at Coppet, and at twenty-two he had published a novel, Le Magnétiseur amoureux (1787), whose basic theme was mesmerism. Even though relations between them cooled, she came to his defense in 1815 after he had been dismissed from his professorship at Göttingen.