It is not one of the least remarkable things about Madame Recamier, that one who had been so petted from childhood, so exposed to pernicious influences, should have continued unspoiled by adulation, uncorrupted by example.  The gay life she led was calculated to make her selfish and arrogant, yet she was to an eminent degree self-sacrificing and gentle.  Constant in her affections, she never lost a friend through waywardness, or alienated any by indifference.  It has been prettily said of her, that she brought the art of friendship to perfection.  Coquettish she was,—­seldom capricious.  Her coquetry was owing more to an instinctive desire to please than to any systematic attempt to swell the list of her conquests.  She had received the gift of fascination at her birth:  and can a woman be fascinating who has not a touch of coquetry?  It was as natural in Madame Recamier to charm as it was to breathe.  It was a necessity of her nature, which her unnatural position developed and fostered to a reprehensible extent.  But while she permitted herself to be loved, and rejoiced in the consciousness of this power, she never carried her flirtations so far as to lose her own self-respect or the respect of her admirers.  She was ever dignified and circumspect, though gracious and captivating.  To most of her lovers, therefore, she was more a goddess whom they worshipped than a woman whom they loved.  Ballanche compared her to the solitary phoenix, nourished by perfumes, and living in the purest regions of the air,—­

    “Who sings to the last his own death-lay,
    And in music and perfume dies away.”

It is a singular fact, that the men who began by loving her passionately usually ended by becoming her true friends.  Still there were exceptions to this rule, exceptions which her biographer does not care to dwell upon, but which the more candid Sainte-Beuve acknowledges, giving as his authority Madame Recamier, who was fond of talking over the past with her new friends. “‘C’est une maniere,’ disait-elle, ’de mettre du passe devant l’amitie.’” The subtile and piquant critic cannot resist saying, in regard to these reminiscences, that “elle se souvenait avec gout.”  Still, pleasant as her recollections were, she often looked back self-reproachfully upon passages of her youth; and Sainte-Beuve, though he calls her coquetry “une coquetterie angelique,” recognizes it as a blemish.  “She, who was so good, brought sorrow to many hearts, not only to indignant and soured men, but to poor feminine rivals, whom she sacrificed and wounded without knowing it.  It is the dark side of her life, which she lived to comprehend.”