Here Madame Récamier received every morning a note from Chateaubriand, and here he came at three o'clock so regularly that the neighbors, it is said, used to set their watches by his approach. Few persons were allowed to meet him, for he was singular and exclusive; but, when evening closed, the élite of France and half the celebrities of Europe found their way here by turns. The Duchess of Devonshire and Sir Humphrey Davy, Maria Edgeworth, Humboldt, Villemain, Montalembert, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Sainte-Beuve were frequent guests, and so also was one who [{92}] deserves more special notice, Jean Jacques Ampère.
It was on the 1st of January, 1820, that his illustrious father presented him, then in his twentieth year, to the circle of friends who met at the Abbaye-aux-Bois. [Footnote 14] The enthusiasm with which he spoke, the gentleness of his disposition, the nobility of his sentiments, and the brilliancy of his talents, soon secured him a high place in Madame Récamier's esteem. He attached himself to her with an ardor that never cooled, and that appeared quite natural to the elder guests who had long experienced her magical influence. During the career of fame which he ran her counsels were his guide, and her goodness his theme. However deep his studies, however distant his wanderings, among the surges of the Categat or the pyramids of the Pharaohs, his thoughts always reverted to her, and letters full of respect and devotion proved how amiable was his character, how observant and gifted his mind.
[Footnote 14: Le Correspondant, Mai, 1864, p. 46.]
In November, 1823, he and the faithful Ballanche accompanied her to Italy. Her niece, whom she treated as a daughter, was suffering from a pulmonary complaint, and change was thought desirable for her. Chateaubriand's visits had grown less frequent. A political rivalry also had sprung up between her dearest friends, Chateaubriand having, in December, 1822, accepted the office of minister of foreign affairs vacant by the resignation of Mathieu de Montmorency. They disdained alike riches and honors, but each was bent on the triumph of a conviction, and on linking his name with a public act. Many thorns beset her path in consequence of their disunion, and absence for a time from France seemed to offer several advantages. She fully possessed the confidence of Madame de Chateaubriand, and all who knew the capricieux immorel, as that lady called her husband, were of opinion that by going to Italy she might avoid many occasions of bitterness, and recall him to a calmer and nobler frame.
Nearly a month was passed in the journey from Paris to Rome. The travellers paused in every town, and explored its monuments, churches, and libraries. During the halt at midday, and again in the evening, they talked over all they had seen, and read aloud by turns. Ballanche and his young friend Ampère discussed questions of history and philosophy, and Madame Récamier gave an air of elegance to an apartment in the meanest inn. She had her own table-cloth to spread, together with books and flowers; and her presence alone, so dignified, so graceful, invested every place with the charm of poetry. Ballanche and Ampère projected a guide-book, and thus the latter was unconsciously laying up stores for that graphic "Histoire Romaine à Rome," [Footnote 15] on which his reputation as an author mainly rests. The year was just closing when they arrived in Rome. It was here that he met Prince Louis Bonaparte, the present emperor, who was then a boy, and here he had long and frequent conversations with Prince Napoleon, his elder brother, while Queen Hortense, then called the Duchess of Saint-Leu, was walking with Madame Récamier in the Coliseum, or the campagna around the church of St. John Lateran or the tomb of Cecilia Metella. Rome was then the asylum of the Bonapartes, as it has ever been the home of the outcast and the consolation of the wretched. The aspect was greatly changed since the former visit Pius VII. had lately yielded up his saintly spirit to God, and Leo XII. sat on his throne. The fêtes and ceremonies that attended his elevation were all over except that of the pontifical blessing given from the balcony of St Peter's. Madame Récamier took her place beside the Duchess of Devonshire in joint sovereignty over society at Rome. [{93}] The Duc de Laval, Montmorency's cousin, who was then the French ambassador, placed his house, horses, and servants at her disposal, and began or ended every evening with her. The duchess just mentioned was in her sixty-fourth year, and preserved the traces of remarkable beauty. Her eyes were full of fire, her skin was smooth and white. She was tall, erect, queenly, and thin as an apparition. Her skeleton hands and arms were like ivory, and she covered them with bracelets and rings. Her manners were distinguished, and she seemed at the same time very affectionate and rather sad.
[Footnote 15: Published in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1866-67.]
The long friendship which subsisted between this English Protestant lady and Cardinal Consalvi was not the least singular feature in her history. Her intimacy with Adrien and Mathieu de Montmorency was such that they always called her the duchesse-cousine, though they were not related to her at all. The Duc de Laval, whom she had known in England, writes thus of her to Madame Récamier, in May, 1823:
"The duchess and I are agreed in admiring you. She possesses some of your qualities, and they have been the cause of her success though life. She is of all women the most attaching. She rules by gentleness, and is always obeyed. What she did in her youth in London, that she now recommences here. She has all Rome at her disposal—ministers, cardinals, painters, sculptors, society, all are at her feet."
Her days, however, were dwindling to a close, as were those also of Cardinal Consalvi. Just seven months after the decease of Pius VII. that eminent statesman followed him to the tomb. All Rome went to see him laid in state—all except Madame Récamier, who, full of the sorrow which the duchess would feel for his loss, and imagining that she would only be pained by such idle curiosity, drove to the solitude of the villa Borghese. On alighting from her carriage, she saw the tall and elegant figure of the duchess in deep mourning, and looking the picture of despair. To her astonishment the latter proposed that they should go and see the lifeless cardinal. It was, indeed, a solemn scene. The chaplains had retired for a brief space to dine, and the public were excluded. The ladies only entered to take their last look of human greatness. There he lay—the steady foe of the French revolution and the imperial despot, the minister of two popes during five-and-thirty years, the able and successful nuncio at the congress of Vienna. There he lay in the sleep of death, with his purple round him, and with his features still beautiful, calm, and severe.
Madame Récamier and her niece fell on their knees, praying fervently for the departed, and still more so for the lonely friend beside them, who had survived all the affections of her youth. She did not long survive. In March, 1824, she expired after a few days' illness. No one had been allowed to approach her till the last moment and for this extraordinary exclusion different reasons are assigned. Madame Récamier and the Duc de Laval believed that it was through fear lest she should declare herself a Catholic. They were admitted just before the vital spark was extinguished, and she died while they knelt beside her, and Madame Récamier held her wan hand, and bathed it with tears. After again visiting Naples, after excursions round the gulf, and reading as she went the glowing descriptions of Chateaubriand and de Staël, while the ardent Ampère and the meditative Ballanche supplied their living comments, Madame Récamier returned to spend her second winter in Rome, and enjoy the society of the Duc de Noailles and Madame Swetchine. The duke was in his twenty-third year, and she used to say that he was the last and youngest of those whom she called her real friends. His subsequent history of Madame de Maintenon proves how just a claim he had to be so regarded.