n to Paris, which the Prince acknowledged in a letter, of which
the following is an extract:--

"_April 24th_, 1808.

"I hope that my letter of the 31st has already been received. I
could only very feebly express to you the happiness I felt on the
receipt of your last, but it will give you some idea of my
sensations when reading it, and in receiving your portrait. For
whole hours I looked at this enchanting picture, dreaming of a
happiness which must surpass the most delicious reveries of
imagination. What fate can be compared to that of the man whom you
love?"

When Madame Recamier subsequently wrote to him more candidly, the Prince
was astonished. "Your letter was a thunderbolt," he replied; but he
would not accept her decision, and claimed the right of seeing her
again. Three years passed in uncertainty, and in 1811 Madame Recamier
consented to meet him at Schaffhausen; but she did not fulfil her
engagement, giving the sentence of exile which had just been passed upon
her as an excuse. The Prince, after waiting in vain, wrote indignantly
to Madame de Stael, "I hope I am now cured of a foolish love, which I
have nourished for four years." But when the news of her exile reached
him, he wrote to her expressing his sympathy, but at the same time
reproaching her for her breach of faith. "After four years of absence I
hoped to see you again, and this exile seemed to furnish you with a
pretext for coming to Switzerland. But you have cruelly deceived me. I
cannot conceive, if you could not or would not see me, why you did not
condescend to tell me so, and I might have been spared a useless journey
of three hundred leagues."

Madame Recamier's conduct to the Prince, even viewed in the light of her
biographer's representations, is scarcely justifiable. Madame Moehl
attempts to defend her. She alleges, that, at the time Prince Augustus
was paying his addresses to her, he had contracted a left-handed
marriage at Berlin. Even if this story be true, there is no evidence
that Madame Recamier was then acquainted with the fact, and if she had
been, there was only the more reason for breaking with the Prince at
once, instead of keeping him so long alternating between hope and
despair. In speaking of him to Madame Moehl, Madame Recamier said that he
was desperately in love, but he was very gallant and had many other
fancies. The impression she made upon him, however, seems to have been
lasting.