Benjamin Constant wrote to her who inspired him with these noble sentiments:
"I am glad that my article has appeared; at least none can now doubt my sincerity. Here is a note which some one wrote to me after reading it: if I were to receive a similar one from somebody else, I should be gay upon the scaffold."
Madame Récamier always reproached herself for having unintentionally exercised so great an influence over an honourable destiny. Nothing, in fact, is more distressing than to inspire those fickle characters with those energetic resolutions which they are incapable of keeping. On the 20th of March, Benjamin Constant belied his article of the 19th. After driving a little distance away from town, he returned to Paris and allowed himself to be caught by Bonaparte's seductions. Appointed a State councillor[472], he obliterated his generous pages by working at the draft of the Additional Act.
From that time forward, he bore a secret wound at his heart; he no longer with assurance broached the thought of posterity; his spoilt and saddened life contributed in no small degree to his death. God preserve us from triumphing over the miseries from which the loftiest natures are not exempt! Heaven does not give us talents without attaching infirmities to them: expiations offered to foolishness and envy. The weaknesses of a superior man are the black victims which antiquity sacrificed to the infernal gods, and still they never allow themselves to be disarmed.
*
Madame de Krüdener.
Madame Récamier spent the Hundred Days in France, where Queen Hortense invited her to stay; the Queen of Naples, on the other hand, offered her an asylum in Italy. The Hundred Days passed. Madame de Krüdener accompanied the Allies, who arrived once more in Paris. She had fallen from novel-writing into mysticism; she wielded a great empire over the mind of the Tsar of Russia.
Madame de Krüdener lodged in a house in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The garden of this house extended as far as the Champs-Élysées. Alexander used to arrive incognito by a gate of the garden, and politico-religious conversations would end with fervent prayers. Madame de Krüdener invited me to one of these celestial incantations: I, the man of every illusion, have a hatred of unreason, a loathing for the nebulous and a scorn for hocus-pocus; we are none of us perfect. The scene bored me; the more I tried to pray, the more I felt the dryness of my soul. I could find nothing to say to God, and the devil incited me to laugh. I had liked Madame de Krüdener better when, surrounded with flowers and still inhabiting this paltry earth, she was writing Valérie. Only, I used to consider that my old friend M. Michaud, so oddly mixed up in this idyll, had not enough of the shepherd about him, notwithstanding his name. Madame de Krüdener, become a seraph, strove to surround herself with angels; the proof is contained in this charming note from Benjamin Constant to Madame Récamier:
"Thursday.
"I am a little embarrassed in fulfilling a commission which Madame de Krüdener has just given me. She entreats you to come looking as little beautiful as you can. She says that you dazzle everybody and that, for that reason, all minds are troubled and all attention becomes impossible. You cannot lay aside your charmingness; but do not enhance it. I could add many things about your beauty on this occasion, but I have not the courage. One can be ingenious on the charm which pleases, but not on that which kills. I shall see you presently; you have told me five o'clock, but you will not come in till six, and I shall not be able to say a word to you. I shall try, however, to be amiable for this once again."
Did not the Duke of Wellington also lay claim to the honour of attracting a glance from Juliet? One of his notes, which I transcribe, is curious only because of the signature: