less interesting, though less intense
and stormy.

But the name most inseparably connected with Mme. Recamier is that of
Chateaubriand. The friendship of an unquestioned sort that seems to
have gone quite out of the world, had all the phases of a more tender
sentiment, and goes far towards disproving the charge of coldness that
has often been brought against her. It was begun after she had reached
the dreaded forties, by the death bed of Mme. de Stael, and lasted
more than thirty years. It seems to have been the single sentiment that
mastered her. One may trace in the letters of Chateaubriand the restless
undercurrents of this life that was outwardly so serene. He writes
to her from Berlin, from England, from Rome. He confides to her his
ambitions, tells her his anxieties, asks her counsel as to his plans,
chides her little jealousies, and commends his wife to her care and
attention. This recalls a remarkable side of her relations with the
world. Women are not apt to love formidable rivals, but the wives of
her friends apparently shared the admiration with which their husbands
regarded her. If they did not love her, they exchanged friendly notes,
and courtesies that were often more than cordial. She consoles Mme. de
Montmorency in her sorrow, and Mme. de Chateaubriand asks her to cheer
her husband's gloomy moods. Indeed, she roused little of that bitter
jealousy which is usually the penalty of exceptional beauty or
exceptional gifts of any sort. The sharp tongue of Mme. de Genlis lost
its sting in writing of her. She idealized her as Athenais, in the novel
of that name, which has for its background the beauties of Coppet,
and vaguely reproduces much of its life. The pious and austere Mme.
Swetchine, whose prejudices against her were so strong that for a long
time she did not wish to meet her, confessed herself at once a captive
to her "penetrating and indefinable charm." Though she did not always
escape the shafts of malice, no better tribute could be offered to the
graces of her character than the indulgence with which she was regarded
by the most severely judging of her own sex.

But she has her days of depression. Chateaubriand is absorbed in his
ambitions and sometimes indifferent; his antagonistic attitude towards
Montmorency, who is far the nobler character of the two, is a source of
grief to her. She tries in vain to reconcile her rival friends. Once she
feels compelled to tear herself from an influence which i