y dreams and of my realities, have been kneaded into a
mixture of charms and sweet pains, of which she has become the
visible form. In the midst of these Memoirs,' the temple I am eagerly
building, she will meet the chapel which I dedicate to her. Perhaps
it will please her to repose there. There I have placed her image."
During the few months that she survived their loss, Madame Recamier
often spoke of Chateaubriand and Ballanche together. Repeatedly, if
the door chanced to open at the hour when these two friends had been
accustomed to enter, she started; and, on being asked the reason,
replied that at certain moments her thought of them was so vivid,
that it amounted to an apparition. Only three days previous to her
death, she received M. de Saint Priest, and took great interest in
hearing him read the eulogy on Ballanche which he was about to
pronounce before the Academy.

Besides these three chief friends, Madame Recamier had many others
well deserving of separate mention. Paul David, nephew of her
husband, was a most devoted and inseparable companion of her whole
life. When she lost her sight, he used to read to her every evening.
He was a poor reader; and, perceiving that she was sensitive to this
defect, he secretly took lessons, at the age of sixty-four, to
improve his elocution. Junot and Bernadotte were her ardent, lasting
friends, and always delighted to serve her. Her rare graces, and her
generous goodness to Madame Desbordes-Valmore, disarmed the
prejudices and won the heart of the gifted but misanthropic Latouche.
The Duke de Noailles, who, under the envelope of a chill manner,
concealed a conscientiousness of judgment, a constancy and delicacy
of feeling, in strong sympathy with her own nature, was admitted to
the rank and title of friend, "a serious thing," says her biographer,
"for her who, more than any one in the world, inspired and practised
friendship in the most perfect sense of the word." He held a place in
her esteem like that held by Matthieu de Montmorency. One of the
latest and warmest of her friends was the brilliant and high-souled
Ampere, introduced to her by Ballanche, who had been an intimate
friend of his father, and who now loved the son with double fervor, a
debt which the grateful young man repaid with interest in a noble
tribute to his memory. Never did a mother feel a deeper solicitude in
the prospects of a darling son, or exert herself more devotedly to
further his success; never