“The Recluse of the Abbaye aux Bois,” she says, “had either read the story of the beggar, or her instinct had persuaded her that vanity and pride are the surest vulnerable points by which to attack and subject the human heart.  From the first to the last of all the orators, writers, artists, or celebrities of no matter what species, that were invited to Mme. Recamier’s house, all heard from her lips the same admiring phrases, the first time they were presented to her.  With a trembling voice she used to say:  ’The emotion I feel in the presence of a superior being does not permit me to express, as I should wish to do, all my admiration, all my sympathy;—­but you can divine,—­you can understand;—­my emotion tells the rest!’ This eulogistic sentence, a well-studied hesitation, words interrupted, and looks of the most perfect enthusiasm, produced in the person thus received a far more genuine emotion than that with which he was met.  It was no other than the artifice of wholesale, universal flattery,—­always and invariably the same,—­with which Mme. Recamier achieved her greatest conquests, and continued to draw around her almost all the eminent men of our epoch.  All this was murmured in soft, low tones, so that he only to whom she spoke tasted the honey poured into his ear.  Her grace of manner all the while was infinite; for though she had no talent for conversation, she had, in the highest degree, the ability which enables one to succeed in certain little combinations, and when she had determined that such or such a great man should become her habitue, the web she spun round him on all sides was composed of threads so imperceptibly fine and so innumerable, that those who escaped were few, and gifted with marvellous address.”

Mme. Ancelot confesses to having “studied narrowly” all Mme. Recamier’s manoeuvres, and to having watched all the thousand little traps she laid for social “lions”; but we are rather astonished herein at Mme. Ancelot’s astonishment, for, with more or less talent and grace, these are the devices resorted to in Paris by a whole class of maitresses de maison, of whom Mme. Recamier is simply the most perfect type.

But the most amusing part of all, and one that will be above all highly relished by any one who has ever seen the same game carried on, is the account of Mme. Recamier’s campaign against M. Guizot, which signally failed, all her small webs having been coldly brushed away by the intensely vainglorious individual who knew he should not be placed above Chateaubriand, and who would for no consideration under heaven have been placed beneath him.  The spectacle of this small and delicate vanity doing battle against this vanity so infinitely hard and robust is exquisitely diverting.  Mme. Recamier put herself so prodigiously out of her way; she who was indolent became active; she who was utterly insensible to children became