her all the objections to a
union where there existed such a disparity of age. No undue influence
was exerted, therefore, in favor of the marriage. Nor was Mademoiselle
Bernard as unsophisticated as French girls usually are at that age. Her
childhood had not been passed in seclusion. Since she was ten years old
she had been constantly in the society of men of letters and men of the
world. Under such influences girls ripen early, and in marrying Monsieur
Recamier she at least realized all her expectations. She did not look
for mutual affection; she expected to find in him a generous and
indulgent protector, and this anticipation was not disappointed. If she
discovered too late that she had other and greater needs, she was deeply
to be pitied, but the responsibility of the step must remain with her.
Madame Lenormant says of the union,--"It was simply an apparent one.
Madame Recamier was a wife only in name. This fact is astonishing. But I
am not bound to explain it, only to attest its truth, which all of
Madame Recamier's friends can confirm. Monsieur Recamier's relations to
his wife were strictly of a paternal character. He treated the young and
innocent child who bore his name as a daughter whose beauty charmed him
and whose celebrity flattered his vanity."

As an explanation of these singular relations, Madame Moehl states that
it was the general belief of Madame Recamier's contemporaries that she
was the own daughter of Monsieur Recamier, whom the unsettled state of
the times had induced him to marry; but there is not a shadow of
evidence in support of this hypothesis,--though, to make it more
probable, Madame Moehl adds, that "Madame Lenormant rather confirms than
contradicts this rumor." In this she is strangely mistaken. Madame
Lenormant does not allude to the report at all. Still she tacitly
contradicts it. Her account of Monsieur Recamier's course with regard to
the divorce proposed between him and his wife is of itself a sufficient
refutation of this idle story.

Monsieur Recamier was a tall, vigorous, handsome man, of easy, agreeable
manners. Perfectly polite, he was deficient in dignity, and preferred
the society of his inferiors to that of his equals. He wrote and spoke
Spanish with fluency, had some knowledge of Latin, and was fond of
quoting Horace and Virgil. "It would be difficult to find," says his
niece, "a heart more generous than his, more easily moved, and yet more
volatile. Let a friend need his t