maternal; she who was of delicate health underwent what only a vigorous constitution would undertake.  But all in vain; she either did not or would not see that M. Guizot would not be second where M. de Chateaubriand was first.  Besides, she split against another rock, that she had either chosen to overlook, or the importance of which she had undervalued.  If Mme. Recamier had for the idol of her shrine at the Abbaye aux Bois M. de Chateaubriand, M. Guizot had also his Madame Recamier, the “Egeria” of the Hotel Talleyrand,—­the Princess Lieven.  The latter would have resisted to the death any attempt to carry off “her Minister” from the salons where his presence was the “attraction” reckoned upon daily, nay, almost hourly; and against such a rival as the venerable Princess Lieven, Mme. Recamier, spite of all her arts and wiles, had no possible chance.  However, she left nothing untried, and when M. Guizot took a villa at Auteuil, whither to repair of an evening and breathe the freshness of the half-country air after the stormy debates of the Chambers, she also established herself close by, and opened her attack on the enemy’s outposts by a request to be allowed to walk in the Minister’s grounds, her own garden being ridiculously small!  This was followed by no end of attentions directed towards Mme. de Meulan, M. Guizot’s sister-in-law, who saw through the whole, and laughed over it with her friends; no end of little dancing matinees were got up for the Minister’s young daughters, and no end even of sweet biscuits were perpetually provided for a certain lapdog belonging to the family!  All in vain!  We may judge, too, what transports of enthusiasm were enacted when the Minister himself was by chance (!) encountered in the alleys of the park, and with what outpourings of admiration he was greeted, by the very person who, of all others, was so anxious to become one of his votaries.  But, as we again repeat, it was of no use.  M. Guizot never consented to be one of the habitues of the salon of the Abbaye aux Bois.  It should be remarked, also, that M. Guizot cared little for anything out of the immediate sphere of politics, and of the politics of the moment; he took small interest in what went on in Art, and none whatever in what went on in the so-called “world”; so that where a salon was not predominantly political, there was small chance of presenting Louis Philippe’s Prime-Minister with any real attraction.  For this reason he was now and then to be met at the house of Mme. de Chatenay, often at that of Mme. de Boigne, but never in any of the receptions of the ordinary run of men and women of the world. His own salon, we again say,—­the salon where he was what Chateaubriand was at the Abbaye aux Bois,—­was the salon of the Princess Lieven; and to have ever thought she could induce M. Guizot to be in the slightest degree faithless to this habit argues, on the part of Mme. Recamier, either a vanity more egregious than we had even supposed, or an ignorance of what she had to combat that seems impossible.  To have imagined for a moment that she could induce M. Guizot to frequent her reunions shows that she appreciated neither Mme. de Lieven, nor M. Guizot, nor, we may say, herself, in the light of the high-priestess of Chateaubriand’s temple.