Says Turquan:
"She was Recamier's daughter."
And so, by all testimony, she was. Years before, Recamier had had a love affair with Madame Bernard; an affair that the stupid Bernard had condoned, if he had known of its existence. Nor, said gossip of the day, was it Madame Bernard's sole indiscretion.
Jeanne had been born. From her earliest babyhood, Recamier had all but worshiped her. Not a day had passed but he had come to see her. He had loaded her with toys, jewelry, candy. He had been her fairy godfather. She had grown up calling him "Daddy Recamier."
Then came the Reign of Terror. Old Bernard's life was in considerable danger. In fact he used to go to the guillotine daily to watch executions, "that he might become used to his fate." Madame Bernard was no fit guardian for a young and incredibly lovely girl in the rotten Paris of that day.
So Recamier, rich and powerful, chose the surest means to safeguard the daughter who was all the world to him. He went through a meaningless "civil ceremony" with her; and installed her, with a retinue of servants, in one-half of his big house. Then and thereafter she was Madame Recamier in name alone; Recamier tenderly watching over her, giving her every luxury money could buy, and observing with a total absence of jealousy her innumerable conquests.
These conquests had begun, by the way, even before Jeanne's early marriage. When she was but thirteen, a young man named Humblot had fallen madly in love with her. To keep Jeanne from reciprocating his flame, she had been packed off to a convent school.
Shortly after the marriage, the Reign of Terror simmered down to the more peaceful if more corrupt Directory. Society reassembled on its peak, after the years of guillotine-aided class leveling. And, in this heterogeneous society, Jeanne blazed forth as a star. Says Sainte-Beuve:
"The world Madame Recamier traversed at this period was very mixed and very ardent."
To its adoration the girl bride lent an amused but wholly impersonal ear. Vaguely she used to wonder why men wept at her feet and poured forth their souls in noisy love for her. Their antics found no response in her own untouched heart. Yet she found them interesting, and therefore in a demure way she encouraged them. Not that such encouragement was really needed.