obtain it so long as he was in a way actively to justify it.  It was when he grew old and produced nothing, and was hourly more and more rusted over by selfishness, churlishness, and an exorbitant adoration of his own genius, that the society of his country fell down upon its knees before him, and was ready to make any sacrifice to insure to itself the honor of one of his smiles or one of his looks.  In this disposition, Madame Recamier speedily obtained a leading influence over Paris society, and when it was notorious that from four to six every day the “Divinity” would be visible in her salons, her salons became the place of pilgrimage for all Paris.  As with those of Mme. d’Abrantes, there was a certain mixture amongst the guests, because, without that, the notoriety, which neither Chateaubriand nor Mme. Recamier disliked, would have been less easily secured; but the tone of the reunions was vastly different, and at the celebrated receptions of the Abbaye aux Bois (where Mme. Recamier spent her last quarter of a century) the somewhat austere deportment of the siecle de Louis XIV. was in vogue.  All the amusements were in their nature grave.  Mlle. Rachel recited a scene from “Polyeucte” for the author of “Les Martyrs,” and for archbishops and cardinals; the Duc de Noailles read a chapter from his history of Mme. de Maintenon; some performance of strictly classical music was to be heard; or, upon state occasions, Chateaubriand himself vouchsafed to impart to a chosen few a few pages of the “Memoires d’Outre-Tombe.”

In her youth Mme. Recamier had been reputed beautiful, and her sole occupation then was to do the honors of her beauty.  She did not dream of ever being anything else; and as she remained young marvellously long,—­as her beauty, or the charm, whatever it was, that distinguished her, endured until a very late epoch of her life,—­she was far advanced in years before the idea of becoming famous through any other medium save that of her exterior advantages ever struck her.  Madame Recamier had no intellectual superiority, but, paraphrasing in action Moliere’s witty sentence, that “silence, well employed, may go far to establish a man’s capacity,” she resolved to employ well the talent she possessed of making other people believe themselves clever.  Mme. Ancelot, whose “good friend” she is supposed to have been, and who treats her with the same sincerity she applies to Mme. d’Abrantes, has a very ingenious and, we have reason to fancy, a very true parallel, for Mme. Recamier.  She compares her to the mendicant described by Sterne, (or Swift,) who always obtained alms even from those who never gave to any other, and whose secret lay in the adroit flatteries with which he seasoned all his beggings.  The best passages in Mme. Ancelot’s whole Volume are those where she paints Mme. Recamier, and we will therefore quote them.