However, what Mme. Recamier went through with regard to the arrogant President du Conseil of the Orleans dynasty, more than one of her imitators are at this hour enduring for some “lion” infinitely illustrious.  This kind of hunt after celebrated persons is a feature of French civilization, and a feature peculiarly characteristic of the French women who take a pride in their receptions.  A genuine maitresse de maison in Paris has no affections, no ties, save those of her salon.  She is wholly absorbed in thinking how she shall render this more attractive than the salon of some other lady, who is her intimate friend, but whose sudden disappearance from the social scene, by any catastrophe, death even, would not leave her inconsolable.  She has neither husband, children, relatives, nor friends (in the genuine acceptation of the word);—­she has, above all, before all, always and invariably, her salon.  This race of women, who date undoubtedly from the famous Marquise de Rambouillet in the time of the Fronde, are now dying out, and are infinitely less numerous than they were even twenty years ago in Paris; but a few of them still exist, and in these few the ardor we allude to, and which would lead them, following in Mme. Recamier’s track, to embark for the North Cape in search of some great celebrity, is in no degree abated.  Madame Recamier is curious as the arch-type of this race, so purely, thoroughly, exclusively Parisian.

Perhaps to a foreigner, however, no salon was more amusing than that of Charles Nodier; but this was of an utterly different description, and all but strictly confined to the world of Literature and Art.  Nodier himself occupied a prominent place in the literature that was so much talked of during the last years of the Restoration and the first years of the Monarchy of July, and his house was the rendezvous for all the combatants of both sides, who at that period were engaged in the famous Classico-Romantic struggle.  Nodier was the Head Librarian of the Arsenal, and it was in the salons of this historic palace that he held his weekly gatherings.  He himself was scarcely to be reputed exclusively of either party; he enjoyed the favors of the Monarchy, and the sympathies of the Opposition; the “Classics” elected him a member of the Academie Francaise, and the “Romantics” were perpetually in his intimacy.  The fact was, that Nodier at heart believed in neither Classics nor Romantics, laughed at both in his sleeve, and only cared to procure to himself the most agreeable house, the greatest number of comforts, and the largest sums of money possible.

“By degrees,” says Mme. Ancelot, “as Nodier cared less for other people, he praised them more, probably in order to compensate them in words for the less he gave them in affection.  Besides this, he was resolved not to be disturbed in his own vanities, and for this he knew there was one only way, which was to foster the vanities of everybody else.  Never did eulogium take such varied forms to laud and exalt the most mediocre things.  Nowhere were so many geniuses whom the public never guessed at raised to the rank of divinities as in the salons of Charles Nodier.”