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went to Clichy. It was about 1799 or 1800 that Lucien Bonaparte, assuming the name of Romeo, because hers was Juliet, wrote to Madame Récamier very grandiloquent love-letters, the first she had ever received. She showed them to her husband, and proposed to forbid him the house; but he, good, easy man, said it would be the height of imprudence to affront the brother of the First Consul; that it would injure his bankinghouse; and commending her good conduct, he desired she would be very civil to Romeo, keeping him withal at a respectful distance. Whatever he might be to her, he certainly was not a "suspicious husband." We may conclude from this that the talent she displayed, now and long after, in combining the various elements of society, the new powers and the old aristocracy, who were returning from emigration, turned out to be useful by extending the circle of his connections; indeed, the latter especially formed a large portion of her society.

Lucien continued for more than a year his gallantries and love-letters. At last he began to think he was making himself ridiculous, and requested they might be returned; and we must own it was a wise foresight. Madame Récamier refused to give them up. Lucien would fain have had the reputation of being more successful; and we think she was fully justified in keeping them, as he by no means discouraged the rumours that were spread; and young and beautiful as she was, she did not escape calumny, which she felt severely, as this was the first affliction she had ever endured. Madame Lenormant adds, with rather questionable taste, that she has these letters still, and keeps them as a testimony to Madame Récamier's virtue; a very useless one now that her whole life is before us, with the letters of Mathieu de Montmorency and many others, expressing the esteem and homage of such noble minds and distinguished characters. But these testimonials, things useless to her, are curious to us as being written by the man of the 18th of Brumaire, and as showing, therefore, the cross-breed between the ruffian and the Lovelace which began to flourish about 1800.

The Bonapartists had now overturned the last remnant of the republican institutions, and they encouraged with all their might the frivolity that had seared the public mind. Lucien was then Minister of the Interior; and, in the highest fervour of his passion for Madame Récamier, he gave grand dinners and concerts to the First Consul. M. Récamier had no notion of her abstaining from such good opportunities of meeting these great and useful powers. And now came the second and last time she ever saw Bonaparte, and the only time she ever spoke to him. The impression that she made on him, unlike the first at the Luxembourg, was very favourable. He looked at her

with softness and admiration, and whispered to Fouché, who came immediately behind her chair, and said in a low voice, "The First Consul thinks you charming." This interview was not without consequences.

Madame Récamier became more and more the fashion. Her salon included the best and most enlightened of the noblesse, daily returning from emigration: the Duc de Guignes, Adrien de Montmorency (afterwards Duc de Laval), Mathieu de Montmorency, Christian de Lamoignon, M. de Narbonne, Madame de Staël, some of the old republicans, and all the new society; Lucien Bonaparte, his three sisters, the Beauharnais, Fouché, Bernadotte, Massena, Moreau, all the generals of the late war, and the most distinguished of the strangers that flocked to Paris from all Europe. It was at this time that her friendship for Mathieu de Montmorency first began, the most interesting and curious feature of the book to those who love the study of rare and beautiful characters. We are sorry to say it has not been duly appreciated or even understood in France.

Montmorency was born in 1760, and during his first youth was a man of fashion and pleasure, very charming and impassioned. When Lafayette went to America, he accompanied him: it was the fashion at that time among the young nobility. On his return, he became one of that section of the highest aristocracy who enthusiastically adopted the idea and hope of regenerating their country. It was on a motion of Mathieu de Montmorency, then député to the States-General, that the Constituent Assembly decreed on the night of the 4th of August the abolition of the privileges of the nobilty. Madame de Staël was as enthusiastic in the same cause. Thus sympathising in all noble and generous thoughts, he became deeply in love with her; he often alludes to this great passion of his life in his letters to Madame Récamier, and even to his latest years there is a solemnity when speaking of Madame de Staël that indicates the depths within. In 1792 he emigrated to Switzerland, and while there he learned that his brother the Abbé de Laval had been guillotined. He was excessively attached to this brother; it fell like a thunderbolt on him; he almost lost his reason; he accused himself of his death. His brother had fallen a victim to the revolution that he himself had been so enthusiastic in bringing on. morse had the same intensity as every other sentiment in this impassioned nature. Madame de Staël's friendship, her tender sympathy, did every thing to soothe this acute suffering; but it was religion alone that gave him peace. From this time the

impetuous and fascinating young man became an austere and fervent Christian, and renounced all earthly passion. He was handsome, had the most elegant manners, with a benevolence,

slightly reserved, which inspired a tender reverence. Naturally impetuous, it was always felt that his calm and serene manner was the effect of self-government. His charity was boundless. The passions which he had subdued had left in this ardent mind a vivacity that gave to his friendship an incomparable charm.

His affection for Madame Récamier was never quite free from anxiety; he was in perpetual fear that her delight in pleasing should be carried too far, and endanger a soul so precious. His advice, his consolations, his pious encouragement, were associated with every painful or dangerous circumstance of her life; he often had to support her strength, for she had many moments of discouragement in a life so brilliant, but yet so empty. For we must always recollect that her destiny precluded her from the natural affections of a wife and mother, and that, lovely as she was, and ever exciting love, she must never feel it. Her pride was a safeguard, but not a consolation; she had none but the pleasures of vanity and the excitement of conquests. The love of pleasing was with her certainly a passion in early youth; we shall see later that when her heart was filled by a deeper sentiment, this passion was much subdued and modified into a habit of pleasing and making those around her happy. Mathieu de Montmorency's letters are a rare monument of an affection, whose purity was equal to its warmth. His mind was elevated, perhaps not sufficiently enlarged; but in all his judgments, his feelings, and his language, there was an incomparable delicacy. The recollection of his youthful errors tempered his severity; and the austerity of the life he had imposed on himself since his conversion added to the veneration he inspired, and gave him an authority, to which he seemed to have a natural right, over all who approached him.

"In

In 1800 M. Bernard was named manager of the post-office; in 1802 he was accused of favouring a conspiracy, which at first seemed to threaten him with deportation or worse. One of the preserved fragments of Madame Récamier's own journal will give a description of this and a picture of the times. "My acquaintance with Bernadotte," she says, "dates from an event of my life too important, too painful, ever to be forgotten; his kindness to me will ever be impressed on my mind." August 1802, my father was at the head of the post-office. Just then a very active Royalist correspondence attracted the attention of the government. Pamphlets written to promote that cause were circulated in the south, and it was impossible to discover by what means; it was long suspected that a public functionary was in the secret. My father had never mentioned it, and both my mother and myself were entirely ignorant of it."

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Madame Bacciochi was dining with Madame Récamier and her mother at Clichy with a party, when a letter was brought to Madame Bernard announcing the arrest of her husband, which caused her to faint away;-by the by, all ladies fainted in those days, but they have given it up now. Her father was in the Temple. The company dispersed. But Madame Récamier saw what terrible consequences might follow; and although Madame Bacciochi showed more desire to get out of the way than to help, she said, half-choked with the effort," As Providence, madam, has made you a witness of our misfortune, no doubt it is that you may help us. I must see the First Consul to-day-I must; and I trust in you to obtain this interview." Madame Bacciochi scemed embarrassed, and advised her to see Fouché to know the exact truth; and then, if necessary, she would try. Madame Récamier asked where she should afterwards find her, and was told that Madame Bacciochi would be in her box at the Théâtre Français. After seeing Fouché, who merely said that this was a very serious matter, but that he could do nothing, and went on to advise her, "See the First Consul this evening; to-morrow will be too late," she left him in great anxiety; and notwithstanding Madame Bacciochi's reluctance to aid her, she went to the theatre to speak to her. There she was with Madame Le Clerc (afterwards the Princess Borghese); they received her very coldly, but she pretended not to see it, and said she came to claim her promise. "I must speak to-night to the First Consul, or my father is lost." They actually told her to stay till the tragedy was over; and Madame Le Clerc asked her if she had ever seen Lafond in Achilles before. She went to the darkest corner of the box, a large and deep one, and dropped on a chair. She then, for the first time, saw in the opposite corner a man with very large, deep, black eyes, who looked at her with kindness and sympathy. When Madame Le Clerc asked this question, and lamented that Lafond's helmet did not become him, and was in a cruel state of anxiety because the plumes were not well fixed on it and would certainly fall off, the black-eyed stranger lost all patience, and said to Madame Bacciochi, “Madame Récamier seems poorly. If she would allow me to accompany her, I will take her home, and go myself to the First Consul." Madame Bacciochi, delighted to get rid of this affair, said to Madame Récamier, "Nothing can be luckier; trust to General Bernadotte; no one is better able to serve you." Accordingly they went away, and he said much to give her hope. After taking her home, he went immediately to the Tuileries. Her own salon she found full of people, come to inquire all the particulars: all Paris was talking of it. She had not courage to face

them, and waited alone till a late hour, when Bernadotte came back triumphant. He had with great difficulty obtained a promise that M. Bernard should not be tried, and he hoped soon to get him released. Of course she was overjoyed, but could not sleep for thinking how she should get at her father, for he was au secret, and she wanted to reassure him. She had been at the Temple before to see poor prisoners; and as she always carried a charm about her, one of the turnkeys was ready to do any thing for her-Coulommier was his name; and with great mystery he took her to Bernard's cell the next morning. They had not been long enough together to explain any thing, when Coulommier rushed in pale and half demented. He seized her by the arm, thrust her into a dark hole, locked her in, and then she heard a bustle. She put her head against the door, heard a monotonous voice, then total silence. The outer door opened and shut; for this recess was within the room or cell where her father was confined. Here she remained till she was half stupefied with thinking of all the horrors committed in the Temple; imagining that Coulommier had been found out, that he was carried to prison, that no one knew where she was, that he might not tell. How long might she remain? The royal family had been in the Temple; what had they not suffered? thought she should lose her reason, but she heard the keys and survived. Coulommier came and took her out. The Préfet de Police had sent for her father just when she had arrived. "A fine fright I have had. Come away as fast as you can, and never ask me the like again." She had been two hours in her recess.

She

Bernadotte kept his word, and one morning he brought an order for her father's release, which he presented with a sort of homage at her feet, asking as his reward to go with her to the prison. Of course her father was dismissed from the post-office. In the St. Helena Memoirs this story is related very differently, but a letter from Bernadotte confirms Madame Récamier's account. It would be well if the whole of those memoirs could be thus sifted; we should then see that the Bonapartist mendacity of 1859 dates in that august family from an earlier period than the coup-d'état.

In 1803 Madame de Staël was ordered not to approach within forty leagues of Paris. Madame Récamier, who saw the affliction this caused her friend, comprehended from that time the character of the Napoleonic despotism. She saw much of Bernadotte, who foresaw the future, and made her his confidant. It was full time, he would say, to put a stop to Bonaparte's ambition; that he was not only plotting to seize the whole power, but intended to make it hereditary in his family. Bernadotte's plan was to arrange a deputation, imposing both

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