In 1798 M. Recamier bought the house which had Recamier belonged to Necker, in what is now the Chaussee d’Antin.  This led to an acquaintance between Madame Recamier and Madame de Stael, which soon ripened into friendship.  In the following year M. Recamier, now very rich, established himself in a fine chateau at Clichy, a short distance from Paris, where he kept open house.  Thither came Lucien Bonaparte, at that time twenty-four years of age, bombastic and consequential, and fell in love with his beautiful hostess, as everybody else did.  But Madame Recamier, with all her fascinations, was not a woman of passion; nor did she like the brother of the powerful First Consul, and politely rejected his addresses.  He continued, however, to persecute her with his absurd love-letters for a year, when, finding it was hopeless to win so refined and virtuous a lady as Madame Recamier doubtless was,—­partly because she was a woman of high principles, and partly because she had no great temptations,—­the pompous lover, then Home Minister, ceased his addresses.

But Napoleon, who knew everything that was going on, had a curiosity to see this woman who charmed everybody, yet whom nobody could win, and she was invited to one of his banquets.  Although she obeyed his summons, she was very modest and timid, and did not try to make any conquest of him.  She was afraid of him, as Madame de Stael was, and most ladies of rank and refinement.  He was a hero to men rather than to women,—­at least to those women who happened to know him or serve him.  That cold and cutting irony of which he was master, that haughty carriage and air which he assumed, that selfish and unsympathetic nature, that exacting slavery to his will, must have been intolerable to well-bred women who believed in affection and friendship, of which he was incapable, and which he did not even comprehend.  It was his intention that the most famous beauty of the day should sit next to him at this banquet, and he left the seat vacant for her; but she was too modest to take it unless specially directed to do so by the Consul, which either pride or etiquette prevented.  This modesty he did not appreciate, and he was offended, and she never saw him again in private; but after he became Emperor, he made every effort to secure her services as maid-of-honor to one of the princesses, through his minister Fouche, in order to ornament his court.  It was a flattering honor, since she was only the wife of a banker, without title; but she refused it, which stung Napoleon with vexation, since it indicated to him that the fashionable and high-born women of the day stood aloof from him.  Many a woman was banished because she would not pay court to him,—­Madame de Stael, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, and others.  Madame Recamier was now at the height of fashion, admired by Frenchmen and foreigners alike; not merely by such men as the Montmorencys, Narbonne, Jordan, Barrere, Moreau, Bernadotte, La Harpe, but also by Metternich, then secretary of the Austrian