ence.

Madame Recamier retained to the last her enviable power of inspiring
affection. Madame Lenormant says that the Countess Caffarelli found
her, in her age and blindness, watching by the death-bed of
Chateaubriand. Drawn by her singular goodness, she sought to share
with her in these holy cares. She thus became the loving and beloved
associate of the final hour. This admirable person worthily closes
the list the rich and bright list of the friends of Madame Recamier.

In her youth, the first wish of Madame Recamier was the wish to
please; and she was, no doubt, a little too coquettish, not enough
considerate of the masculine hearts she damaged, and the feminine
hearts she pained. The Duke de Laval said, "The gift of involuntary
and powerful fascination was her talisman." Not, sometimes, to make a
voluntary use of that talisman, she must have been more than human.
As years and trials deepened her nature, she sought rather to make
happy than merely to please. She always cared more to be respected
than to be flattered, to be loved than to be admired. Admiration and
sympathy were stronger in her than vanity and love of pleasure:
reason and justice were strongest of all. Her judgment was as clear,
her conscience as commanding, her sincerity, courage, and firmness as
admirable, as her heart was rich and good. When Fouche said to her,
in her misfortunes and exile, "The weak ought to be amiable," she
instantly replied, "And the strong ought to be just." Her exquisite
symmetry of form, her dazzling purity of complexion, her graciousness
of disposition, her perfect health, her desire to please, and
generous delight in pleasing, composed an all-potent philter, which
the sympathy of every spectator drank with intoxicating effect. She
discriminated, with perfect truthfullness, the various degrees of
acquaintance and friendship. She made all feel self-complacent, by
her unaffected attention causing them to perceive that she wished
their happiness and valued their good opinion. Ballanche tells her,
"You feel yourself the impression you make on others, and are
enveloped in the incense they burn at your feet." Wherever she went,
as if a celestial magnet passed, all faces drifted towards her with
admiring love and pleasure. By her lofty integrity and her matchless
sweetness and skill, as by a rare alchemy, she transmuted her
fugitive lovers into permanent friends. Her talents were as
attractive as her features: little by little her