ght of age, and sheltered, with such ingenious
tenderness, by the sacred friendship of a woman who forgot her own
infirmities, in the endeavor to lighten his."

History scarcely affords a finer instance of the ministrations of
womanhood to soothe the woes and supply the wants of man than is
exhibited in the relation of Madame Recamier and Chateaubriand. His
egotistic and restless mental activity; his exaggerated, perturbed,
and gnawing self-consciousness; his despairing view of men; his
alienation from the spirit of his age, made him most lonely and
unhappy. Meanwhile his ardent poetic susceptibility, his soaring
imagination, his impassioned tenderness, his knightly sentiments, his
religious feeling, pre-eminently fitted him to enjoy the moral
homage, the delicate, sympathetic attentions, of a woman crowned with
every exalting attribute of her sex. He appreciated the prize at its
full worth. When nothing else could any longer interest him, her
charm retained its pristine power. When beyond his threescore and
ten, he writes to her thus, at different times:

"Other things are old stories: you are all that I love to see." "I am
going to walk out with the lark. She shall sing to me of you: then
she will be silent for ever in the furrow into which she drops." "I
have only one hope graven on my heart, and that is, to see you
again." "Cherish faithfully your attachment to me: it is all my life.
You see how my poor hand trembles; but my heart is firm." "I have but
one thought, fidelity to you: all the rest is gone."

For many years, even after his noble faculties were broken, and he
had lost the use of his limbs, so that he was forced to be carried
into her room, he passed the hours of every day, from three to six,
with her. Amidst the ordinary hatreds, miseries, and indifferences of
society, is it not indeed instructive and refreshing to see this
example of a spotless friendship still yielding, in extreme old age,
the interest, the solace, the happiness, which every thing else had
ceased to yield?

Chateaubriand devotes to Madame Recamier the eighth volume of his
"Memoires d'Outre Tombe." He recognizes, in her serious friendship, a
support for the weariness of his life, a remuneration for all his
sufferings.

"It seems, in nearing the close of my existence, as if every thing
that has been dear to me has been dear to me in Madame Recamier, and
that she was the concealed source of my affections. All my memories,
both of m