; and
Madame Recamier, being again in Rome, witnessed one of the most touching
scenes of those eventful days, when all the nobles and gentry went out
to meet their spiritual and temporal sovereign, and amid the exultant
shouts and rapture of the crowd, dragged his gilded carriage to St.
Peter's Church, where was celebrated a solemn _Te Deum._

But Madame Recamier did not tarry long in Italy, She hastened back to
Paris, for the tyrant was fallen. She was now no longer beaming in
youthful charms, with groups of lovers at her feet, but a woman of
middle age, yet still handsome,--for such a woman does not lose her
beauty at thirty-five,--with fresh sources of enjoyment, and a keen
desire for the society of intellectual and gifted friends. She now gave
up miscellaneous society,--that is, fashionable and dissipated crowds of
men and women in noisy receptions and ceremonious parties,--and drew
around her the lines of a more exclusive circle. Hither came to see her
Ballanche, now a resident of Paris, Mathieu de Montmorency, M. de
Chateaubriand, the Due de Broglie, and the most distinguished nobles of
the ancient regime, with the literary lions who once more began to roar
on the fall of the tyrant who had silenced them, including such men as
Barante and Benjamin Constant. Also great ladies were seen in her
_salon_, for her husband's fortunes had improved, and she was enabled
again to live in her old style of splendor. Among these ladies were the
Duchesse de Cars, the Marchionesses de Podences, Castellan, and
d'Aguesseau, and the Princess-Royal of Sweden. Also distinguished
foreigners sought her society,--Wellington, Madame Kruedener, the friend
of the Emperor Alexander, the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, the Duke
of Hamilton, and whoever was most distinguished in that brilliant circle
of illustrious people who congregated at Paris on the restoration of
the Bourbons.

In 1819 occurred the second failure of M. Recamier, which necessarily
led again to a new and more humble style of life. The home which Madame
Recamier now selected, and where she lived until 1838, was the
Abbaye-au-Bois, while her father and her husband, the latter now
sixty-nine, lived in a small lodging in the vicinity. She occupied in
this convent--a large old building in the Rue de Sevres--a small
_appartement_ in the third story, with a brick floor, and uneven at
that. She afterwards removed to a small _appartement_ on the first
floor, which looked upon the