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and sheltered, with such ingenious tenderness, by the sacred friendship of a woman who forgot her own infirmities in the endeavor to lighten his."

History scarcely affords a finer instance of the ministrations of womanhood to soothe the woes and supply the wants of man than is exhibited in the relation of Madame Récamier and Chateaubriand. His egotistic and restless mental activity; his exaggerated, perturbed, and gnawing self-consciousness; his despairing view of men; his alienation from the spirit of his age, made him most lonely and unhappy. Meanwhile, his ardent poetic susceptibility, his soaring imagination, his impassioned tenderness, his knightly sentiments, his religious feeling, pre-eminently fitted him to enjoy the moral homage, the delicate, sympathetic attentions, of a woman crowned with every exalting attribute of her sex. He appreciated the prize at its full worth. When nothing else could any longer interest him, her charm retained its pristine power. When beyond his threescore and ten, he writes to her thus, at different times:

"Other things are old stories: you are all that I love to see.” — "I am going to walk out with the lark. She shall sing to me of you: then she will be silent for ever in the furrow into which she drops." "I have only one hope graven on my heart, and that is, to see you again." - "Cherish faithfully your attachment to me: it is all my life. You see how my poor hand trembles; but my heart is firm." — "I have but one thought, - fidelity to you: all the rest is gone."

For many years, - even after his noble faculties were broken, and he had lost the use of his limbs, so that he was forced to be carried into her room, - he passed the hours of every day, from three to six, with her. Amidst the ordinary hatreds, miseries, and indifferences of society, is it not indeed instructive and refreshing to see this example of a spotless friendship still yielding, in extreme old age, the interest, the solace, the happiness, which every thing else had ceased to yield?

Chateaubriand devotes to Madame Récamier the eighth volume of his "Memoires d'Outre Tombe." He recognizes,

VOL. LXXXII. NEW SERIES, VOL. III. NO. III.

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in her serious friendship, a support for the weariness of his life, a remuneration for all his sufferings.

"It seems, in nearing the close of my existence, as if every thing that has been dear to me has been dear to me in Madame Récamier, and that she was the concealed source of my affections. All my memories, both of my dreams and of my realities, have been kneaded into a mixture of charms and sweet pains, of which she has become the visible form. In the midst of these 'Memoirs,' the temple I am eagerly building, she will meet the chapel which I dedicate to her. Perhaps it will please her to repose there. There I have placed her image."

During the few months that she survived their loss, Madame Récamier often spoke of Chateaubriand and Ballanche together. Repeatedly, if the door chanced to open at the hour when these two friends had been accustomed to enter, she started; and, on being asked the reason, replied that at certain moments her thought of them was so vivid, that it amounted to an apparition. Only three days previous to her death, she received M. de Saint Priest, and took great interest in hearing him read the eulogy on Ballanche which he was about to pronounce before the Academy.

Besides these three chief friends, Madame Récamier had many others well deserving of separate mention. Paul David, nephew of her husband, was a most devoted and inseparable companion of her whole life. When she lost her sight, he used to read to her every evening. He was a poor reader, and, perceiving that she was sensitive to this defect, he secretly took lessons, at the age of sixty-four, to improve his elocution. Junot and Bernadotte were her ardent, lasting friends, always delighted to serve her. Her rare graces, and her generous goodness to Madame Desbordes-Valmore, disarmed the prejudices and won the heart of the gifted but misanthropic Latouche. The Duke de Noailles, who, under the envelop of a chill manner, concealed a conscientiousness of judgment, a constancy and delicacy of feeling, in strong sympathy with her own nature, was admitted to the rank and title of friend; "a serious thing," says her biographer, "for her who, more than any one in the world, inspired and practised friendship in the most perfect sense of the word." He held a place in her esteem like that held by Matthieu de Montmorency. One of the latest and warmest of her friends was the brilliant and high-souled Ampère, introduced to her by Ballanche, who had been an intimate friend of his father, and who now loved the son with double fervor, - a debt which the grateful young man repaid with interest in a noble tribute to his memory. Never did a mother feel a deeper solicitude in the prospects of a darling son, or exert herself more devotedly to further his success; never did a son more thoroughly idolize a beautiful and good mother, than was realized between Madame Récamier and Ampère. Solely to please her, this most entertaining and most courted man in Paris devoted himself not merely to her, which would have been easy, but to Chateaubriand, which was difficult. Nothing can better illustrate her irresistible charm. And nothing can better illustrate the coarseness and ignorance of many of our critics, than the presumption with which one of them, in 1864, speaking of Ampère's funeral, says, "He was one of Madame Récamier's many lovers, and was bitterly disappointed at her refusal to marry him after the death of Chateaubriand!"

Such were the few principal men who penetrated to the centre of that select circle, in whose outer ranges of general benevolence the right of citizenship was granted to so many choice figures. Among the more distinguished of these latter may be named Benjamin Constant, the Duke de Doudeauville, De Gerando, Prosper de Barante, Delacroix, Gérard, Thierry, Villemain, Lamartine, Guizot, De Tocqueville, Sainte-Beuve. Surrounded by such persons as these, in the humble chamber to which, on the loss of her fortune, she had betaken herself, she presided like a priestess in the temple of friendship, ever pre-occupied with them, their glory her dominant passion, never herself seeking to shine, but only intent to elicit and display their gifts. Was it not natural that they should, in the humorous phrase of Ballanche, "gravitate towards the centre of the Abbaye-aux-Bois"?

Margaret Fuller, after seeing an engraving of Madame Récamier, writes in her journal,

"I have so often thought over the intimacy between her and Madame de Staël. It is so true that a woman may be in love with a woman, and a man with a man. I like to be sure of it; for it is the same love which angels feel, where

""Sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib. "

Of the friendship of women, perhaps none is more historic than this. A large selection from the correspondence was published, in 1862, by Madame Lenormant, in connection with a volume called "Madame de Staël and the Grand Duchess Louise." It is impossible to read these letters without being struck by the rare grace that reigned in the union of which they are the witnesses, and being affected by the sight of a friendship so faithful, a confidence so entire.

The first meeting of these celebrated women took place when Madame de Staël was thirty-two, Madame Récamier twenty-one. Among the few existing papers from the pen of the latter is a description of this interview:

"She came to speak with me for her father, about the purchase of a house. Her toilet was odd. She wore a morning gown, and a little dress bonnet adorned with flowers. I took her for a stranger in Paris. I was struck with the beauty of her eyes and her look. She said, with a vivid and impressive grace, that she was delighted to know me; that her father, M. Necker, at these words I recognized Madame de Staël! I heard not the rest of her sentence. I blushed, my embarrassment was extreme. I had just come from reading her 'Letters on Rousseau,' and was full of the excitement. I expressed what I felt more by my looks than by my words. She at the same time awed and drew me. She fixed her wonderful eyes on me with a curiosity full of kindness, and complimented me on my figure in terms which would have seemed exaggerated and too direct if they had not been marked by an obvious sincerity, which made the praise very seductive. She perceived my embarrassment, and expressed a desire to see me often on her return to Paris; for she was then going to Coppet. It was then a mere apparition in my life; but the impression was intense. I thought only of Madame de Staël, so strongly did I return the action of this ardent and forceful nature."

Madame de Staël was a plain, energetic embodiment of the most impassioned genius. Madame Récamier was a dazzling personification of physical loveliness, united with the perfection of mental harmony. She had an enthusiastic admiration for her friend, who in return found an unspeakable luxury in her society. Her angelic candor of soul, and the frosty purity which enveloped her as a shield, inspired the tenderest respect; while her happy equipoise calmed and refreshed the restless and expensive imagination of the renowned authoress. There could be no rivalry between them. Both had lofty and thoroughly sincere characters. They were partly the reflection, partly the complement, of each other; and their relation was a noble and blessed one, charming and memorable among such records. "Are you not happy," writes Madame de Staël, " in your magical power of inspiring affection? To be sure always of being loved by those you love, seems to me the highest terrestrial happiness, the greatest conceivable privilege." Again, acknowledging the gift from her friend of a bracelet containing her portrait, she says, "It has this inconvenience: I find myself kissing it too often." In 1800, Madame Récamier had a brilliant social triumph in England: "Ah, well, beautiful Juliette! do you miss us? Have your successes in London made you forget your friends in Paris?" Madame Récamier was the original of the picture of the shawl-dance in " Corinne;" and her friend says of her, in the "Ten Years of Exile," beauty expressed her character." The following passages, taken from letters written in 1804, show how the intimacy had deepened:

""her

I have

"For four days, faithless beauty, I have not heard the noise of the wind without thinking it was your carriage. Come quickly. My mind and my heart have need of you more than of any other friend." -"I have just seen Madame Henri Belmont. People say that all beautiful persons remind them of you. It is not so with me. never found any one who looks like you; and the eyes of this Madame "Dear and beautiful Henri seem to me blind by the side of yours." Juliette, they give me the hope of seeing you when I return from Italy; then only shall I no longer feel myself an exile. I will receive

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