as brilliant, but there was lurking in the background the demon
of sadness and lassitude and the terrible disease of the eighteenth
century,--ennui.

Two splendid portraits of Mme. Recamier are left to us: one by her
passionate but unsuccessful lover, Benjamin Constant, picturing her
as the personification of attractiveness; the other by M. Lenormant,
showing that she desired constant admiration: "She lacked the
affections which bring veritable happiness and the true dignity of
woman. Her barren heart, desirous of tenderness and devotion, sought
recompense for this need of living, in the homage of passionate
admiration, the language of which pleases the ears." Mme. Recamier,
while still a child, seemed to realize the power of her beauty, and
even before her marriage in 1793 she would often say, when demanded
in marriage: "Mon Dieu! how beautiful I must be already!" A mere girl
when married, being only sixteen years of age, she felt no love for
her husband, who was her senior by twenty-five years. Soon after the
terrible times of "the Reign of Terror" she found herself one of the
most beautiful women in Paris, and her husband one of the wealthiest
of bankers. The three rival women of the times were Mme. Recamier,
Mme. Tallien, and Josephine. The terrible days of the guillotine were
succeeded by an uninterrupted reign of pleasure, "when a fever of
amusement possessed everyone, and the desire for distraction of all
kinds seemed to have been pushed to its limits." M. Turquan states
that in the reign of dissolute extravagance, immorality, and gorgeous
splendor, Mme. Recamier formed a striking contrast by her simplicity.
Her first triumph was at the church Saint-Roche, the most fashionable
of Paris, where she was selected to raise a purse for charity. On one
occasion the collection amounted to twenty thousand francs, all due to
the beauty of the woman passing the plate. She was soon invited by her
friend Barras to all the balls and fetes under the Directorate.

In 1798 M. Recamier bought the house formerly tenanted by Necker, and
later established himself in a chateau at Clichy, where he received
his friends, among whom was Lucien Bonaparte, who attempted the
ruin of the beautiful hostess, but without success. Napoleon himself
attempted in vain to win her to his court as maid of honor and as an
ornament, her refusal incurring his anger, especially as she was the
height of fashion and courted by all the great men of the age.