r the time extinguished. Madame Recamier, though beautiful and
beloved, had no such precious compensations. She depended for her
happiness upon her friends, and they who rely upon others for their
chief enjoyments must meet with bitter and deep disappointments. Madame
Recamier had great triumphs which secured to her moments of rapture.
When the crowd worshipped her beauty, she probably experienced the same
delirium of joy, the same momentary exultation, that a _prima donna_
feels when called before an excited and enthusiastic audience. But
satiety and chagrin surely follow such triumphs, and she lived to feel
their hollowness.

In a letter to her adopted daughter, she says,--"I hope you will be more
happy than I have been"; and she confessed to Sainte-Beuve, that more
than once in her most brilliant days, in the midst of _fetes_ where she
reigned a queen, she disengaged herself from the crowd surrounding her
and retired to weep in solitude. Surely so sad a woman was not to be
envied.

Another friend of Madame Recamier's youth, whose friendship in a marked
degree influenced her life, was Matthieu de Montmorency. He was
seventeen years older than she, and may with emphasis be termed her best
friend. A devout Roman Catholic, he awakened and strengthened her
religious convictions, and constantly warned her of the perils
surrounding her. Much as he evidently admired and loved her, he did not
hesitate to utter unwelcome truths. Vicomte, afterward Duc de
Montmorency, belonged to one of the oldest families of France, but,
espousing the Revolutionary cause, he was the first to propose the
abolition of the privileges of the nobility. He was married early in
life to a woman without beauty, to whom he was profoundly indifferent,
and soon separated from her, though from family motives the tie was
renewed in after-years. In his youth he had been gay and dissipated; but
the death of a favorite brother, who fell a victim to the Revolution,
changed and sobered him. From an over-sensibility, he believed himself
to be the cause of his brother's death on account of the part he had
taken in hastening the Revolution, and he strove to atone for this
mistake, as well as for his youthful follies, by a life of austerity and
piety. While his letters testify his great affection for Madame
Recamier, they are entirely free from those lover-like protestations and
declarations of eternal fidelity so characterise of her other masculine
correspondents