memory--she attacks Madame Recamier
as a selfish coquette, enamored only of admiration, fame, and power.
Her chief weapon, as this woman asserts, was a skilful application of
deliberate unprincipled flattery to the pride and vanity of everybody
she met. The conduct attributed to Madame Recamier in the odious
examples fabricated by this slanderer, would have been insufferably
repulsive even to average persons. To persons of such insight,
refinement, and elevation as marked all her most intimate associates,
it would have been unutterably disgusting. The whole representation,
while awakening the indignation of the reader, shows what a degrading
caricature noble souls undergo when reflected in the minds of base
observers. Contrast with the view of this Madame Ancelot what is said
with unquestionable authority, after the intimacy of a lifetime, by
the gifted and illustrious Countess de Boigne. "Amidst the
overwhelming reverses of her husband's fortunes, I found Madame
Recamier so calm, so noble, so simple, lifted so far above all the
vain shows of her former life, that I was extremely struck; and I
date from that moment the vivid affection which subsequent events
have served only to confirm. No portrait does her justice. All praise
her incomparable beauty, her active beneficence, her sweet urbanity.
Many declare her great talents; but few have discerned, through the
habitual ease of her intercourse, the loftiness of her heart, the
independence of her character, the impartiality of her judgment, and
the fairness of her soul!" These are the words of one absolutely
competent to judge, intrinsically incapable of falsifying; and also
when death had removed every motive for flattery.

All who have written on this most admired and beloved woman have had
much to say of the secret and the lesson of her sway. One ascribes
her dominion to a subtile blandishment; another to a marvellous tact,
another to an indescribable magic. But really the secret was simple.
It was the refined suavity and Womanliness of her nature, the
ineffable charm of a temper of unconquerable sweetness and
kindliness, a ruling "desire to give pleasure, avert pain, avoid
offence, render her society agreeable to all its members, and enable
every one to present himself in the most favorable light." Let the
fair creatures made to adorn and reign over society add to their
beauty, as Sarah Austin observes, the proper virtues of true-born and
Christian women, gentleness