Hither came to see her Ballanche, now a resident of Paris, Mathieu de Montmorency, M. de Chateaubriand, the Due de Broglie, and the most distinguished nobles of the ancient regime, with the literary lions who once more began to roar on the fall of the tyrant who had silenced them, including such men as Barante and Benjamin Constant.  Also great ladies were seen in her salon, for her husband’s fortunes had improved, and she was enabled again to live in her old style of splendor.  Among these ladies were the Duchesse de Cars, the Marchionesses de Podences, Castellan, and d’Aguesseau, and the Princess-Royal of Sweden.  Also distinguished foreigners sought her society,—­Wellington, Madame Kruedener, the friend of the Emperor Alexander, the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, the Duke of Hamilton, and whoever was most distinguished in that brilliant circle of illustrious people who congregated at Paris on the restoration of the Bourbons.

In 1819 occurred the second failure of M. Recamier, which necessarily led again to a new and more humble style of life.  The home which Madame Recamier now selected, and where she lived until 1838, was the Abbaye-au-Bois, while her father and her husband, the latter now sixty-nine, lived in a small lodging in the vicinity.  She occupied in this convent—­a large old building in the Rue de Sevres—­a small appartement in the third story, with a brick floor, and uneven at that.  She afterwards removed to a small appartement on the first floor, which looked upon the convent garden.

Here, in this seclusion, impoverished, and no longer young, Madame Recamier received her friends and guests.  And they were among the most distinguished people of France, especially the Duc de Montmorency and the Viscount Chateaubriand.  The former was a very religious man, and the breath of scandal never for a moment tainted his reputation, or cast any reproach on the memorable friendship which he cultivated with the most beautiful woman in France.  This illustrious nobleman was at that time Minister of Foreign Affairs, and was sent to the celebrated Congress of Vienna, where Metternich, the greatest statesman of the age, presided and inaugurated a reaction from the principles of the Revolution.

But more famous than he was Chateaubriand, then ambassador at London, and afterwards joined with Montmorency as delegate to the Congress of Vienna, and still later Minister of Foreign Affairs, who held during the reign of Louis XVIII. the most distinguished position in France as a statesman, a man of society, and a literary man.  The author of the “Genius of Christianity” was aristocratic, moody, fickle, and vain, almost spoiled with the incense of popular idolatry.  No literary man since Voltaire had received such incense.  He was the acknowledged head of French literature, a man of illustrious birth, noble manners, poetical temperament, vast acquisitions, and immense social prestige.  He took sad and desponding views of life, was intensely conservative, but had doubtless a lofty soul as well as intellectual supremacy.  He occupied distinct spheres,—­was poet, historian, statesman, orator, and the oracle of fashionable salons, although he loved seclusion, and detested crowds.  The virtues of his private life were unimpeached, and no man was more respected by the nation than this cultivated scholar and gentleman of the old school.