convent garden.

Here, in this seclusion, impoverished, and no longer young, Madame
Recamier received her friends and guests. And they were among the most
distinguished people of France, especially the Duc de Montmorency and
the Viscount Chateaubriand. The former was a very religious man, and the
breath of scandal never for a moment tainted his reputation, or cast any
reproach on the memorable friendship which he cultivated with the most
beautiful woman in France. This illustrious nobleman was at that time
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and was sent to the celebrated Congress of
Vienna, where Metternich, the greatest statesman of the age, presided
and inaugurated a reaction from the principles of the Revolution.

But more famous than he was Chateaubriand, then ambassador at London,
and afterwards joined with Montmorency as delegate to the Congress of
Vienna, and still later Minister of Foreign Affairs, who held during the
reign of Louis XVIII. the most distinguished position in France as a
statesman, a man of society, and a literary man. The author of the
"Genius of Christianity" was aristocratic, moody, fickle, and vain,
almost spoiled with the incense of popular idolatry. No literary man
since Voltaire had received such incense. He was the acknowledged head
of French literature, a man of illustrious birth, noble manners,
poetical temperament, vast acquisitions, and immense social prestige. He
took sad and desponding views of life, was intensely conservative, but
had doubtless a lofty soul as well as intellectual supremacy. He
occupied distinct spheres,--was poet, historian, statesman, orator, and
the oracle of fashionable _salons_, although he loved seclusion, and
detested crowds. The virtues of his private life were unimpeached, and
no man was more respected by the nation than this cultivated scholar and
gentleman of the old school.

It was between this remarkable man and Madame Recamier that the most
memorable friendship of modern times took place. It began in the year
1817 at the bedside of Madame de Stael, but did not ripen into intimacy
until 1818, when he was fifty and she was forty-one. His genius and
accomplishments soon conquered the first place in her heart; and he kept
that place until his death in 1848,--thirty years of ardent and
reproachless friendship. Her other friends felt great inquietude in view
of this friendship, fearing that the incurable melancholy and fitful
moods of the Viscount would have a