youth Mme. Recamier had been reputed beautiful, and her sole
occupation then was to do the honors of her beauty. She did not dream
of ever being anything else; and as she remained young marvellously
long,--as her beauty, or the charm, whatever it was, that
distinguished her, endured until a very late epoch of her life,--she
was far advanced in years before the idea of becoming famous through
any other medium save that of her exterior advantages ever struck
her. Madame Recamier had no intellectual superiority, but,
paraphrasing in action Moliere's witty sentence, that "silence, well
employed, may go far to establish a man's capacity," she resolved to
employ well the talent she possessed of making other people believe
themselves clever. Mme. Ancelot, whose "good friend" she is supposed
to have been, and who treats her with the same sincerity she applies
to Mme. d'Abrantes, has a very ingenious and, we have reason to fancy,
a very true parallel, for Mme. Recamier. She compares her to the
mendicant described by Sterne, (or Swift,) who always obtained alms
even from those who never gave to any other, and whose secret lay in
the adroit flatteries with which he seasoned all his beggings. The
best passages in Mme. Ancelot's whole Volume are those where she
paints Mme. Recamier, and we will therefore quote them.

"The Recluse of the Abbaye aux Bois," she says, "had either read the
story of the beggar, or her instinct had persuaded her that vanity and
pride are the surest vulnerable points by which to attack and subject
the human heart. From the first to the last of all the orators,
writers, artists, or celebrities of no matter what species, that were
invited to Mme. Recamier's house, _all_ heard from her lips the
same admiring phrases, the first time they were presented to her. With
a trembling voice she used to say: 'The emotion I feel in the presence
of a superior being does not permit me to express, as I should wish to
do, all my admiration, all my sympathy;--but you can divine,--you can
understand;--my emotion tells the rest!' This eulogistic sentence, a
well-studied hesitation, words interrupted, and looks of the most
perfect enthusiasm, produced in the person thus received a far more
genuine emotion than that with which he was met. It was no other than
the artifice of wholesale, universal flattery,--always and invariably
the same,--with which Mme. Recamier achieved her greatest conquests,
and continued to draw around her a