“She pretends”—growled the Emperor—“to speak neither of public affairs, nor of me. But it happens invariably that every one comes out of her presence less attached to me than when he went in.”
Hunted to Coppet, she was attended there by Benjamin Constant—“the scribe of her dictation; the aid-de-camp of her thought; the man who almost equaled her in conversational power;”—visited there, by Byron, Schlegel, Sismondi, and so many other men of mark and power that a cordon of French police was drawn about the house near enough to watch all comers and goers without revealing their proximity. Madame Récamier braved the danger of discovery and the consequent wrath of Napoleon by journeying thither by post-carriage from France, expressly to see her persecuted friend. Arriving under cover of the darkness, she tarried but a night, departing early the next morning. So soon as the news could travel to Paris and a post be sent in reply, a messenger overtook her in her Swiss tour with an order from the Emperor, prohibiting her return to the metropolis under penalty of fine and imprisonment.
Above the broad arch of the doorway, within which the two women—one as eminent for her beauty as was the other for her genius, met and parted, is carved the Neckar coat-of-arms. The court-yard is full of flowers, the high iron fence separating it from lawn and park, wreathed with roses and white jasmine. The central building and two wings of the château encompass it on three sides. Great iron gates give egress in the direction of the grounds. These are extensive and of much natural beauty. A road bends around a lawn brightened by beds of geraniums and coleas. An oval pond is in the center, a solitary willow drooping above it. Beyond pool and circling drive, is an old stone bench from which we got the best view of the house. It is of gray stone, shaded darkly by age. Above the second story is a high, sloping roof, pierced by dormer windows and many chimneys. The wings are peaked towers, capped by quaint wooden knops and spires that may be seen far up and down the lake. Masses of chestnuts and limes, diversified by a few hemlocks and spruces, embower the mansion. The undulating line of the Juras is visible above it, like another roof-tree. Branching off from the wider road are foot-paths, overhung by trees. A swift brook is the limit of the lawn at the right. The banks are steep and green with turf and the ivy that has strayed downward from the tree-boles. Lime and poplar leafage make the clear water darkly deep. Foot-bridges span it by which one can pass into the meadows beyond.
“Ah, madame!” said Chateaubriand, while walking in the peaceful demesne with its mistress,—“If the Emperor would but banish me, likewise—to Coppet!”
She paced these walks like a caged lioness; ate her heart out in the fine old house yonder.
“I would rather,” she cried, passionately,—“live in the Rue Jean Pain Mollet, with two thousand francs a year, than upon one hundred thousand at Coppet!”
Her egotism was as magnificent as her genius. For the food of one and the display of the other, Paris was the only place upon the globe.
It was while she lived at Coppet that she made her love-match with De Rocca, a young French officer, and an invalid, absent from the army on furlough at Geneva. He was eminently handsome, and she worshiped beauty. The suit of a man of twenty-two to a widow twenty years his senior, was dangerous flattery to one who drew in admiration as the very breath of life. Other men had paid court to her intellect, her position, her wealth. This man loved the woman he would make his wife.
“My name belongs to Europe!” she replied to his first offer.
“I will love you so well as to make you love me!” was his answer.