ery
point, is friendship. Unlike those of so many of the famous women of
France, her friendships were as remarkable for their rational
soundness, purity, and tenacity, as for their fervor. They were free
from every thing morbid or affected. An adverse fate forbade the love
to which she seemed destined by her bewitching beauty and grace; and
a certain divine chill in the blood, a stamp from Diana in the
senses, turned all the warmth of affection upwards into the mind, to
radiate thence in her face and manners, and to make her a high
priestess of friendship. The pure and wise Ballanche, who idolized
her, said that she was originally an Antigone, of whom people vainly
wished by force to make an Armada.

Her nominal husband is supposed by some to have been in reality her
father; the marriage being merely a titular one, to secure his
fortune to her in case of his death by the guillotine, of which he
was then in daily dread. Deprived of the usual domestic vents of
affection, her rich heart naturally led her to crave the best
substitute, friendship. And her matchless personal gifts, together
with her truly charming traits of character, enabled her permanently
to win and experience this in a very exalted degree. Her three
principal friends were Montmorency, Ballanche, and Chateaubriand; all
three original and extraordinary characters, and all three worthy in
spite of some drawbacks on the part of the last of the extraordinary
devotion she gave them. The letters of these three possess extreme
interest. Especially, those of the first named are the unique
monument of an affection whose purity and delicacy equalled its
vivacity and depth.

Matthieu de Montmorency was one of the noblest of the nobility of
France, alike in birth and in spirit. In his youth a voluptuous
liver, he had afterwards undergone a genuine and solemn conversion.
While in Switzerland, the news of the guillotining of his brother
gave him such a shock, that it revolutionized his motives and his
life. The gay, impassioned, fascinating man of the world became an
austere and fervent Christian. The rich sensibility he had formerly
spent in amours and display, henceforward ennobled by wisdom and
sanctified by religion, lent a singular charm of tenderness and
loftiness to his friendships. The memory of his own errors gave a
gracious charitableness to his judgments; his sorrow imparted an
incomparable refinement to his air; his grave and devout demeanor
inspired ven