well set off by an exquisite white
dress adorned with pearls--a style she affected the year around.

But her beauty alone could hardly have contributed to the marvellous
success of Mme. Recamier, as some critics assert. Guizot, for
instance, suspects her nature to have been less superficial than
other writers might lead one to suppose. He said: "This passionate
admiration, this constant affection, this insatiable taste for society
and conversation, won her a wide friendship. All who approached and
knew her--foreigners and Frenchmen, princes and the middle classes,
saints and worldlings, philosophers and artists, adversaries as
well as partisans--all she inspired with the ideas and causes she
espoused." Her qualities outside of her beauty were tact, generosity,
and elevation of soul, combined with an amiable grace which was
unlimited, however superficial it may have been. Knowing how to
maintain, in her salon, harmony and even cordial relations between men
of the most varied temperaments and political ideas, it was possible
for her to remain all her life an intelligent and warm-hearted bond
between the elite minds and their diverse sentiments, which she
tactfully tempered. Though ever faithful to one cause, she admitted
men and women of all parties to her salon. She was moderate and
just in the midst of the most arduous struggles, tolerant toward her
adversaries, generous toward the conquered, sympathetic to all, and
remarkably successful in conciliating all political, literary, and
philosophical opinions as well as the passions which she aroused in
her worshippers. To these qualities, as much as to her beauty, were
due the harmony of her life, the unity of her character--which were
never troubled by the turmoils of politics or the emotions of love.
She was not wife, mother, or lover; "she never belonged to anyone in
soul or sense." Always mistress of her imagination as well as of
her heart, she permitted herself to be charmed but never carried
away--receiving from all, but giving nothing in return. Her life
was brilliant, but there was lurking in the background the demon
of sadness and lassitude and the terrible disease of the eighteenth
century,--ennui.

Two splendid portraits of Mme. Recamier are left to us: one by her
passionate but unsuccessful lover, Benjamin Constant, picturing her
as the personification of attractiveness; the other by M. Lenormant,
showing that she desired constant admiration: "She lacked the