"Geneva, 17 November.[379]
"Ah, my dear Juliet, what pain have I felt at the shocking news that reaches me! How I curse the exile which does not permit me to be with you, to press you to my heart! You have lost all that has to do with the ease and comfort of life; but, if it were possible to be more loved, more interesting than you are, that is what would have happened to you. I am going to write to M. Récamier, whom I pity and respect. But, tell me, would it be a dream to hope to see you here this winter? If you were willing, three months spent here, in a narrow circle where you would be passionately cared for: but in Paris also you inspire that feeling. At any rate, I will come to see you at Lyons, or anywhere outside my 'forty leagues,' to embrace you, to tell you that I have felt more tenderness for you than for any woman I have ever known. I can say nothing to you by way of consolation, unless it be that you will be loved and valued more than ever and that the admirable features of your generosity and benevolence will be known, in spite of yourself, through this misfortune, as they never would have been without it. Certainly, to compare your situation with what it was, you have lost; but if it were possible for me to envy what I love, I would give all that I am to be you. A beauty unmatched in Europe, a stainless reputation, a proud and generous character, what a fortune of happiness that remains in this sad life through which we go so naked! Dear Juliet, let our friendship draw closer; let it consist not only of generous services, which have all come from you, but of a sustained correspondence, a reciprocal desire to confide our thoughts in one another, a life together. Dear Juliet, you shall make me come back to Paris, for you are still an all-powerful person, and we shall see each other every day; and, as you are younger than I, you shall close my eyes, and my children shall be your friends. My daughter cried this morning at my tears and yours. Dear Juliet, we both enjoyed the luxury that surrounded you; your fortune was ours, and I feel myself ruined because you are no longer rich. Believe me, some happiness remains when one has made herself loved thus.
"Benjamin wants to write to you; he is much upset. Mathieu de Montmorency has written me a very touching letter about you. Dear friend, may your heart remain calm amid so many sorrows. Alas, neither the death nor the indifference of your friends threaten you, and those are the eternal wounds. Adieu, dear angel, adieu! Respectfully I kiss your charming face...."
Madame Récamier now became the object of a new interest: she left society without complaining and seemed as much made for solitude as for the world. Her friends remained to her, "and this time," M. Ballanche has said, "fortune withdrew alone."
Madame de Staël drew her friend to Coppet[380]. Prince Augustus of Prussia, captured at the Battle of Eylau[381], passed through Geneva on his way to Italy: he fell in love with Madame Récamier. The intimate and private life that belongs to every man continued its course beneath the general life, the blood of battles and the transformation of empires. The rich man, on waking, beholds his gilded panellings, the poor man his smoky rafters: there is but one sun-ray to give light to both.
Prince Augustus, believing that Madame Récamier might consent to a divorce, proposed to her in marriage. A record of this passion remains in the picture of Corinne, which the Prince obtained from Gérard; he made a present of it to Madame Récamier as an undying reminder of the feeling with which she had inspired him and of the intimate friendship which united Corinne and Juliet.
The summer was spent in merry-making: the world was upset; but it happens that the echo of public catastrophes, mingling with the joys of youth, redoubles their charm; we surrender ourselves the more eagerly to pleasures the nearer we feel to losing them.
Madame de Genlis has made a novel out of this attachment of Prince Augustus. I found her one day in the throes of composition. She was living at the Arsenal, surrounded by dusty books, in a gloomy apartment. She expected nobody; she was dressed in a black gown; her white hair obscured her face; she held a harp between her knees, and her head was sunk upon her breast. Hanging on to the strings of the instrument, she allowed her pale and emaciated hands to wander on either side of the sonorous wire-work, from which she drew feeble sounds, resembling the distant and undefinable voices of death. What was the ancient sybil singing? She was singing Madame Récamier. She had at first hated her, but had later been conquered by beauty and distress. Madame de Genlis had just finished this page on Madame Récamier, giving her the name of Athenais:
Prince Augustus of Prussia.
"The Prince entered the drawing-room, with Madame de Staël showing him the way. Suddenly the door half opened, and Athenais advanced. By the elegance of her figure, by the dazzling brilliancy of her features, the Prince could not fail to recognise her, but he had formed a quite different idea of her: he had represented this woman to himself as famous for her beauty, as proud of her successes, with an assumed bearing and the kind of confidence which that sort of celebrity only too often gives; and he saw a timid young person step forward with embarrassment and blush as she appeared. The sweetest sentiment mingled with his surprise.
"After dinner, they did not go out, because of the excessive heat; they went down into the gallery to make music until the time came to take the air. After a few brilliant chords and harmonious sounds of entrancing sweetness, Athenais sang to her own accompaniment on the harp. The Prince listened to her with rapture and, when she had finished, looked at her with inexpressible commotion, exclaiming:
"'And such talents!'"
Madame de Staël, in her maturity, loved Madame Récamier: Madame de Genlis, in her decrepitude, found back for her the accents of her youth; the author of Mademoiselle de Clermont[382] lays the scene of her novel[383] at Coppet, with the author of Corinne, a rival whom she detested: that was one wonder. Another wonder is to see me writing these details. I am turning over letters which remind me of times in which I lived solitary and unknown. There was happiness without me on the shores of Coppet, which I have not seen since without a certain movement of envy. The things which have escaped me on earth, which have fled from me, which I regret, would kill me, were I not so near my tomb; but, at this short distance from eternal oblivion, truths and dreams are equally vain: at the end of one's life, all is time lost.
Madame de Staël set out a second time for Germany[384]. Here begins again a series of letters to Madame Récamier, perhaps even more charming than the first.