There was a vast and dreary city toward the south of Italy which had once been called Rome. It was now the capital of the department of the Tiber. Without the Caesars or the Pope, it was Rome no more. No foreigners thronged its streets and fanes, its prelates were scattered, and its scanty inhabitants looked sullenly on the Frank soldiers who turned its palaces and sanctuaries into barracks. Hither came Madame Récamier, and her apartment in the Corso was soon hailed as an oasis in the wilderness. All the strangers in the deserted capital, and many of the Romans, paid their court to this queen of society; and Canova, one of the few stars left in the twilight, visited her every evening, and wrote to her every morning. He chiselled her bust as no hand but his could chisel it, and seized ideal beauty while copying what was before him. He called it "Beatrice," and it was worthy of the name. Ballanche, too, came all the way from Lyons to visit the universal favorite. He travelled night and day, and could remain at Rome only one week. The very evening of his arrival Madame Récamier began to do the honors of the Eternal City. Three carriages full of friends drove from her house to St. Peter's and the Coliseum, where they all alighted. Ballanche moved solemnly, with his hands beside him, overpowered by the grandeur of all around. On a sudden his parfaite amie looked back. He was not without his shoes this time, but without his hat. "M. Ballanche," she said, "where is your hat?" "Ah!" replied the philosopher, "I have left it at Alexandria." And so it was—so [{89}] little did his thoughts dwell on external life.
From Rome the travellers proceeded to Naples. A cordial welcome awaited Madame Récamier from Caroline Bonaparte, whom she had known of old. A page from the royal palace brought her a magnificent basket of fruit and flowers immediately on her arrival, and she soon became the confidante of both king and queen. Joachim Murat sat on a usurped throne, and was reaping the bitter fruits of a false position. Duty bound him to Napoleon, interest to the allies. First he was perfidious to his master, next to his colleagues. One day he entered his wife's saloon in great agitation, and finding Madame Récamier, avowed to her that he had signed the coalition. He then asked her opinion of his act, taking it for granted that it would be favorable. But, though not an imperialist, she was a Frenchwoman. "Sire!" she replied, "you are French, and to France you should be faithful." Murat turned pale. "I am a traitor then," he exclaimed, and, opening the window in haste, pointed to the British fleet sailing into the bay. Then burying his face in his hands, he sunk upon a sofa and wept. The year after, faithless alike to Europe and to the empire, a tempest cast him on the shore of Pizzo, and he was taken and shot like a brigand.
A dense crowd was collected in the Piazza del Popolo to see the entry of Pius VII., after the Apollyon of kingdoms had been sent to Elba. The Roman nobles and gentleman headed the procession, and their sons drew the pontiff's carriage. In it he knelt, with his hair unsilvered by age, and his fine face expressing deep humility. His hand was extended to bless his people, but his head bowed before the almighty disposer of human events. It was the triumph of a confessor rather than of a sovereign—of a principle, not of a person. Never did such a rain of tears fall on the marble paving at St. Peter's as when at last he traversed the church and prostrated himself before the altar over the tomb of the apostles. Then the Te Deum rose and echoed through those gorgeous arches, and Madame Récamier was not insensible to the affecting scene. Before leaving Rome the second time, she paid a farewell visit to General Miollis, who had commanded the French forces. He was extremely touched by this civility, and received her in a villa he had bought, and which still bears his name. He was quite alone, with an old soldier for his servant. She was, he said, the only person who had called upon him since he had ceased to govern Rome.
After three years' absence she returned to Paris, and, still radiant with beauty and overflowing with gladness, resumed her undisputed empire over polite society. Her husband had regained his lost ground, and was again a prosperous banker, while she possessed in her own right a fortune inherited from her mother. The restoration of Louis XVIII. had changed the face of her salon and of society in general. Her friends were once more in power, and those who had vexed her and them were banished or forgotten. The Duke of Wellington often visited her, and she presented him to Queen Hortense. He shocked her, however, after the battle of Waterloo, by saying of Napoleon, "I have well beaten him!" She had no love for the ex-emperor; but France was her country, and she could not exult over its defeat. Her niece declares that Wellington was not free from intoxication with his success, and that nothing but the indignant murmurs of the pit prevented him from entering the royal box with his aides-de-camp. [Footnote 11] Madame de Staël died in 1817, and her friend, Mathieu de Montmorency, gathered up with piety and hope every indication of a religious spirit which she had left behind. She never raised her eyes to heaven without thinking of him, and she believed that [{90}] in his prayers his spirit answered hers. [Footnote 12] Prayer, she wrote, was the bond which united all religious beings in one, and the life of the soul. Sin and suffering were inseparable, and she had never done wrong without falling into trouble. During the long sleepless nights of her last illness she repeated constantly the Lord's prayer to calm her mind, and she learned to enjoy the "Imitation of Jesus Christ."
[Footnote 11: "Souvenirs de Madame Récamier," vol. i., p.268.]
[Footnote 12: "Dix années d'Exil." ]
The void she left in Madame Récamier's circle was filled by one whose writings were, the talk and admiration of Europe. This was Chateaubriand. Professor Robertson has lately brought him very agreeably to our remembrance in his able and interesting lectures on modern history. The Duc de Noailles, that contemporary, as he has been called, of Louis XIV., pronounced his eulogy when taking his place in the French Academy, and he has left us his biography in the most charming form in which that of any one can be read, viz., written by himself. The portrait a man draws of himself in writing rarely deceives; for the very attempt to falsify would betray the real character. Chateaubriand's vanity escapes him in his memoirs as frequently as it did in his conversation, yet there cannot be a doubt that he had great qualities, and has built himself an enduring name. That extreme refinement of thought which is inseparable from genius makes him difficult to appreciate, and the phases of society through which he passed were so conflicting as to be fatal to the consistency of almost all public men. Yet he was on the whole faithful through life to his first principles. At one time he defended monarchy, at another freedom, pleading most eloquently for that which for the moment seemed most in danger. He knew the value of their mutual support, and, like all who move on a double line, he was often misunderstood. Born of an ancient and noble family, he chose at the same time the profession of arts and arms. The popular excesses of 1791 drove him from Paris, and he embarked for America. There, in the immense forests and savannas of Canada and the Floridas, often living among savages, he stored up materials for his early romances, and acquired that grandeur and depth of coloring in descriptions of natural scenery for which he is so remarkable. He was near the tropics, in the land of the fire-fly and hummingbird, when he heard of the flight of Louis XVI. and his arrest at Varennes. Hastening back to rejoin the standard of his royal master, he again took arms, and was seriously wounded at the siege of Thionville. From Jersey he was transported to London, where he lived in extreme want, taught French, and translated for publishers. Here, too, he produced his first work, which was tainted with the infidelity of the day. The death of his pious mother recalled him to a better mind, and awakened in him a train of thought which issued at length in the "Génie du Christianisme." "Atala" and "René," likewise under the form of romance, serving as episodes to his great work, avenged the cause of religion, and powerfully aided in producing a reaction in favor of Christianity. The First Consul hailed the rising star, and attached him as secretary to Cardinal Fesch's embassy at Rome. In 1804 he had just been appointed to represent France in the republic of Valais, when he heard of the odious execution of the Duc d'Enghien, and immediately sent in his resignation. He could serve a ruler who had brought order out of chaos, but not an assassin. From that day he never ceased to be hostile to the empire. After wandering, as Ampère did later, along the classic shores of Greece and the monuments of Egypt, and kissing the footprints of his Redeemer on the mount of Calvary, he returned to France, and in the Vallée-aux-Loups composed his prose poem, the "Martyrs," in [{91}] which, as in "Fabiola" and "Callista," the glowing imagery of pagan art is blended with the ethical grandeur of the religion of Christ. A place was awarded him in the French Academy, which he was not permitted to take till the Bourbons were restored. Their return filled him with joy, and a pamphlet he had written against Bonaparte was said by Louis XVIII. to have been worth an army to his cause. On the escape of Napoleon from Elba he accompanied the king to Ghent, and, on re-entering Paris, was raised to the peerage and made minister of state. In 1816, having published his "Monarchy according to the Charter," he lost the royal favor and his honorary title. His work, however, continues to this day "a textbook of French constitutional law." [Footnote 13]
[Footnote 13: Robertson's "Lectures," p. 291.]
Such was the statesman, apologist, philosopher, and poet who, in his forty-ninth year, obtained an ascendancy over Madame Récamier's imagination so complete that the religious Montmorency trembled, and the thoughtful Ballanche dreamed some ill. They thought, too, that her manners changed toward them, but she soon restored their confidence. It would be vain, indeed, to deny that her regard for Chateaubriand caused her many anxious thoughts and secret tears, particularly when, after a few years, he neglected her for the din of political debate and the society of beings less exalted and pure. But this estrangement was only temporary, and both before it and after it, till he died, her daily task was to soothe the irritability to which poets are said to be especially subject; to amuse him herself, as Madame de Maintenon amused Louis XIV.; and to surround him with those who, for her sake as well as for his, labored for the same charitable end.
Another reverse befel her in 1819. M. Récamier fouled again, and £4,000, which his wife had invested in his bank, went with the rest. Trusting in the security of his position, she had shortly before purchased a house in the Rue d'Anjou and furnished it handsomely. There was a garden belonging to it, and an alley of linden-trees, where Chateaubriand tells us he used to walk with Madame Récamier. But the house and garden were sold, and the occupant removed to a small apartment in the quaint old Abbaye-aux-Bois. She placed her husband and M. Bernard with M. Bernard's aged friend in the neighborhood, and dined with them, her niece, Ballanche, and Paul David every day. In the evening she received company, and her cell soon became the fashion, if not the rage. It was an incommodious room, with a brick floor, on the third story. The staircase was irregular; and Chateaubriand complains of being out of breath when he reached the top. A piano, a harp, books, a portrait of Madame de Staël, and a view of Coppet by moonlight, adorned it. Flower-pots stood in the windows; and in the green garden beneath nuns and boarders were seen walking to and fro. The top of an acacia rose to a level with the eye, tall spires stood out against the sky, and the hills of Sèvres bounded the distant horizon. The setting sun used to gild the picture and pierce through the open casements. Birds nestled in the Venetian blinds, and the hum of the great city scarce broke the silence.