loved her so long and well die alone.  She crossed the street, and took her place by his bedside, thus sealing her own fate, for all hopes of recovering her sight were lost.  Her health also was extremely delicate; but, much as she needed quiet and repose, she kept up her relations with society and held her receptions for Chateaubriand’s sake.  But both their lives were fast approaching to a close.  Chateaubriand died on the 4th of July, 1848.  For some time before his death he was speechless, but kept his dying eyes fixed upon Madame Recamier.  She could not see him, and this dark, dreary silence filled her soul with despair.

Madame Recamier shed no tears over her loss, and uttered no lamentations.  She received the condolences of her friends with gratitude, and strove to interest herself in their pursuits.  But a deadly paleness, which never left her, spread over her face, and “the sad smile on her lips was heart-breaking.”  Sightless and sad, it was time for her to die.  Madame de Stael and Montmorency, the friends of her youth, had long since departed.  Ballanche was gone, and now Chateaubriand.  She survived the latter only eleven months.  Stricken with cholera the following summer, her illness was short, but severe, and her last words to Madame Lenormant, who bent over her, were, “Nous nous reverrons,—­nous nous reverrons.”

So impalpable was the attraction that brought the world to the feet of Madame Recamier that it is interesting to analyze it.  It did not lie in her beauty and wealth alone; for she lost the one, while time blighted the other.  Nor was it due to power of will; for she was not great intellectually.  And had she been a person of strong convictions, she would never have been so universally popular.  As it was, she pleased equally persons of every shade of opinion and principle.  Her instinctive coquetry can partly account for her sway over men, but not over women.  What, then, was the secret of her influence?  It lay in the subtile power of a marvellous tact.  This tact had its roots deep in her nature.  It was part and parcel of herself, the distinguishing trait in a rare combination of qualities.  Though nurtured and ripened by experience, it was not the offspring of art.  It was an effect, not a cause,—­not simply the result of an intense desire to please, regulated by a fine intuitive perception, but of higher, finer characteristics, such as natural sweetness of temper, kindness of heart, and forgetfulness of self.  Her successes were the triumph of impulse rather than of design.  In order to please she did not study character, she divined it.  Keenly alive to outward influences, and losing in part her own personality when coming in contact with that of others, she readily adapted herself to their moods,—­and her apprehension was quick, if not profound.  It is always gratifying to feel one’s self understood, and every person who talked with Madame Recamier enjoyed this pleasant consciousness.  No one felt a humiliating