"We come to the time when Madame Récamier saw herself for the first time the object of a strong and regular passion. Till then she had received unanimous worship from all who had met her, but her manner of life nowhere offered centres of union where one could be sure of finding her. She never received at home and she had not yet formed a society where one could penetrate every day to see her and try to please her.
Lucien Bonaparte.
"In the summer of 1799, Madame Récamier came to live at the Château de Clichy, a quarter of a league from Paris. A man since celebrated through different sorts of pretensions, and even more celebrated through the advantages which he has refused than through the successes which he has won, Lucien Bonaparte, obtained an introduction to her.
"He had not, till then, aspired to any save facile conquests and, to obtain these, had studied only the romancing methods which his want of knowledge of the world represented to him as infallible. It is possible that he was enticed at first by the idea of captivating the loveliest woman of his time. Young, the leader of a party in the Council of the Five Hundred, the brother of the first general of the age, he was gratified at uniting the triumphs of a statesman and the successes of a lover in his person.
"He conceived the idea of having recourse to a fiction to declare his love to Madame Récamier; he imagined a letter from Romeo to Juliet, and sent it as a work of his to her who bore the same name."
Here is this letter from Lucien, known to Benjamin Constant; in the midst of the revolutions which have stirred the world of reality, it is racy to see a Bonaparte plunge into the world of fictions:
LETTER FROM ROMEO TO JULIET
by the author of the Tribu indienne[347]"Venice, 29 July.
"Romeo writes to you, Juliet: if you refuse to read me, you will be crueller than our parents whose long strife has at last been appeased; no doubt that horrid strife will not revive. ... A few days since, I knew you only by repute. I had sometimes seen you in the temples and at feasts; I knew you were the most beautiful; a thousand lips repeated your praises, and your charms had struck but not dazzled me.... Why has peace delivered me to your empire? Peace! It reigns in our families, but trouble reigns in my heart....
"Recall to yourself the day when I was first presented to you. We were celebrating at a large banquet the reconciliation of our fathers. I had come from the Senate, where the troubles raised against the Republic had created a lively impression.... You arrived; then all flocked round:
"'How lovely she is!' they cried....
"The throng in the evening filled the gardens of Bedmar. Importunate people, who are everywhere, took possession of me. This time I had neither patience with them nor affability: they kept me from you!... I wished to account for the emotion that was overcoming me. I knew love and wished to master it.... I was carried away, and with you left the festive spot.
"I have seen you since: love has seemed to smile upon me. One day, seated at the water's edge, motionless and pensive, you were stripping a rose of its leaves; alone with you, I spoke.... I heard a sigh... vain illusion! Recovering from my mistake, I saw indifference with its placid brow seated between us two.... The passion which masters me found utterance in my discourse, and yours bore the amiable and cruel impress of childhood and pleasantry.
"Each day I would wish to see you, as though the dart were not fixed deep enough in my heart. The moments at which I see you are very rare, and those young Venetians who surround you and talk insipid gallantry to you are hateful to me. How is it possible to talk to Juliet as to other women!
"I have wanted to write to you; you will know me, you will no longer refuse to believe me; my soul is ill at ease; it thirsts for sentiment. If love has not stirred yours; if Romeo in your eyes is but an ordinary man, oh, I conjure you by the bonds which you have laid upon me, be severe with me from kindness; do not smile to me again, do not speak to me again, thrust me far from you. Tell me to go away and, if I can execute that rigorous order, remember at least that Romeo will ever love you; that none has ever reigned over him as Juliet has; and that he can no longer cease to live for her, at least in remembrance."
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For a sober-minded man, all this is rather laughable: the Bonapartes used to live on theatres, novels and verses; is the life of Napoleon himself aught else than a poem?
Lucien's passion.
Benjamin Constant continues, while commenting upon this letter:
"The style of this letter is evidently imitated from all the novels that have depicted the passions, from Werther to the Nouvelle Héloïse. Madame Récamier easily discovered, from several circumstances of detail, that she herself was the object of the declaration offered as though simply for her perusal. She was not sufficiently accustomed to the language of love to be warned by experience that everything in the expressions was, perhaps, not sincere; but a true and sure instinct warned her; she replied with simplicity and even gaiety, and showed much more indifference than disquietude or fear. It needed no more for Lucien really to experience the passion which he had at first somewhat exaggerated.
"Lucien's letters grew truer, more eloquent, in proportion as he grew more impassioned; certainly they always show the ambition for ornamentation, the desire to attitudinize; he cannot go to sleep without 'flinging himself into the arms of Morpheus.' In the midst of his despair, he describes himself as surrendered to the great occupations which surround him; he is astonished that a man like him sheds tears; but, in all this alloy of declamation and phrases, there is nevertheless eloquence, sensibility and grief. At last, in a letter full of passion in which he wrote to Madame Récamier, 'I cannot hate you, but I can kill myself,' he suddenly makes a general reflection: 'I am forgetting that love is not snatched, but won,' and then adds, 'After receiving your note, I received many of a diplomatic character; I learnt some news of which public rumour has no doubt informed you. Congratulations surround, deafen me... people talk to me of what is not you! 'Then another exclamation:
"'How weak is nature compared to love!'
"And yet this news which found Lucien unconcerned was an immense piece of news: Bonaparte's disembarkation on his return from Egypt.
"A new destiny had landed with its promises and its threats; the 18 Brumaire was not more than three weeks distant.
"Barely escaped from the dangers of that day, which will always fill so great a place in history, Lucien wrote to Madame Récamier:
"'I have seen your image!... You will have had my last thought!'...
"Madame Récamier contracted a friendship, which became daily more intimate and which still endures, with a woman who was illustrious in a very different way from that in which M. de La Harpe was famous.
"M. Necker, having been struck off the list of Emigrants, charged Madame de Staël, his daughter, to sell a house which he had. Madame Récamier bought it, and this was an occasion for her to see Madame de Staël[348].
"The sight of this celebrated woman at first filled her with excessive timidity. The face of Madame de Staël has been very widely discussed. But a proud glance, a sweet smile, an habitual expression of kindliness, the absence of any minute affectation and of any embarrassing reserve, caressing words, praises somewhat direct but seeming to escape from enthusiasm, an inexhaustible variety of enthusiasm surprise, attract and conciliate almost all who approach her. I know no woman, nor even any man, who is more convinced of her own vast superiority to all the world and who makes this conviction bear less hard upon others.
"Nothing could be more engaging than the conversations of Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier. The quickness of the one in expressing a thousand new thoughts, the quickness of the other in grasping and perceiving them; that masculine and powerful mind which disclosed all, that delicate and subtle mind which understood all; those revelations made by a trained genius to a youthful intelligence worthy to receive them: all this formed a union which it is impossible to describe without having had the happiness to witness it one's self.
"The friendship of Madame Récamier for Madame de Staël was strengthened by a sentiment which they both entertained: filial love. Madame Récamier was fondly attached to her mother, a woman of rare merit, whose health was already giving rise to fears and whose loss her daughter has never since ceased to regret. Madame de Staël had vowed a worship to her father which his death has rendered but the more exalted. Always overpowering in her manner of expressing herself, she becomes still more so, above all, when speaking of him. Her earnest voice, her eyes ready to grow wet with tears, the sincerity of her enthusiasm moved the soul of even those who did not share her opinion of that celebrated man. Ridicule has frequently been cast on the praises which she has awarded him in her writings; but, when you have heard her on that subject, it is not possible to make it an object of mockery, for nothing that is true is ridiculous."
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