For me the diamond dawns are set
      In rings of beauty,
    And all my paths are dewy wet
      With pleasant duty;
    Beneath the boughs of calm content
      My hammock swinging,
    In this green tent my eves are spent,
      Feasting and singing.

* * * * *

MADAME RECAMIER.

HER LOVERS, AND HER FRIENDS.

As the most beautiful woman of her day, Madame Recamier is widely known; as the friend of Chateaubriand and De Stael, she is scarcely less so.  An historic as well as literary interest is attached to her name; for she lived throughout the most momentous and exciting period of modern times.  Her relations with influential and illustrious men of successive revolutions were intimate and confidential; and though the role she played was but negative, the influence she exerted has closely connected her with the political history of her country.

But interesting as her life is from this point of view, in its social aspect it has a deeper significance.  It is the life of a beautiful woman,—­and so varied and romantic, so fruitful in incident and rich in experience, that it excites curiosity and invites speculation.  It is a life difficult, if not impossible, to understand.  Herein lies its peculiar and engrossing fascination.  It is a curious web to unravel, a riddle to solve, a problem at once stimulating and baffling.  Like the history of the times, it is full of puzzling contradictions and striking contrasts.  The daughter of a provincial notary, Madame Recamier was the honored associate of princes.  A married woman, she was a wife only in name.  A beauty and a belle, she was as much admired by her own as by the other sex.  A coquette, she changed passionate lovers into lifelong friends.  Accepting the open and exclusive homage of married men, she continued on the best of terms with their wives.  One day the mistress of every luxury that wealth can command,—­the next a bankrupt’s wife.  One year the reigning “Queen of Society,”—­the next a suspected exile.  As much flattered and courted when she was poor as while she was rich.  Just as fascinating when old and blind as while young and beautiful.  Loss of fortune brought no loss of power,—­decline of beauty, no decrease of admiration.  Modelled by artists, flattered by princes, adored by women, eulogized by men of genius, courted by men of letters,—­the beloved of the chivalric Augustus of Prussia, and the selfish, dreamy Chateaubriand,—­with the high-toned Montmorencys for her friends, and the simple-minded Ballanche for her slave.  Such were some of the triumphs, such some of the contrasts in the life of this remarkable woman.