ished to be loved, and this inevitably implies a shade
of coquetry in a young and beautiful woman. There is an element of
fascination in this very coquetry, with its delicate subtleties and its
shifting tints of sentiment. That she carried it too far is no doubt
true; that she did so wittingly is not so certain. Her victims were
many, and if they quietly subsided into friends, as they usually did, it
was after many struggles and heart burnings. But if she did not exercise
her power with invariable discretion, it seems to have been less the
result of vanity than a lack of decision and an amiable unwillingness to
give immediate pain, or to lose the friend with the lover. With all her
fine qualities of heart and soul, she had a temperament that saved her
from much of the suffering she thoughtlessly inflicted upon others. The
many violent passions she roused do not seem to have disturbed at all
her own serenity. The delicate and chivalrous nature of Mathieu
de Montmorency, added to his years, gave his relations to her a
half-paternal character, but that he loved her always with the profound
tenderness of a loyal and steadfast soul is apparent through all the
singularly disinterested phases of a friendship that ended only with his
life.

Prince Augustus, whom she met at Coppet, called up a passing ripple on
the surface of her heart, sufficiently strong to lead her to suggest a
divorce to her husband, whose relations to her, though always friendly,
were only nominal. But he appealed to her generosity, and she thought of
it no more. Why she permitted her princely suitor to cherish so long the
illusions that time and distance do not readily destroy is one of the
mysteries that are not easy to solve. Perhaps she thought it more kind
to let absence wear out a passion than to break it too rudely. At all
events, he cherished no permanent bitterness, and never forgot her. At
his death, nearly forty years later he ordered her portrait by Gerard to
be returned, but her ring was buried with him.

The various phases of the well-known infatuation of Benjamin Constant,
which led him to violate his political principles and belie his own
words rather than take a course that must result in separation from
her, suggest a page of highly colored romance. The letters of Mlle.
de Lespinasse scarcely furnish us with a more ardent episode in the
literature of hopeless passion. The worshipful devotion of Ampere and
Ballanche would form a chapter no