The Parisian life, brilliant and exhausting, strenuous and artificial, was above all intoxicating, and I needed such intoxication.... The wit, the culture, the taste, the flights of fancy of so many men and women around me, their enthusiasms, their sympathy, their conversations, their qualities, and even their defects, became necessary to me.
Life could not be dull with these companions, whatever their ideas and their habits or their hobbies.
There was, for instance, old M. H., a distinguished author and a man of the world, who had lived under three kings, one Emperor, and two Republics, and whom my mother called "a living encyclopædia." He was small, a dandy, whose love of detail in attire would have excited the envy of a D'Orsay or a Brummell. He was as careful of his appearance as a professional beauty, in spite of his age. His curly white hair was extremely well kept. He wore spotless white spats all the year round, and always had a flower in his button-hole: Parma violets in winter and a pale pink carnation in summer. He had one curious mania--he visited cemeteries. We frequently went together to the Père Lachaise and to his favourite Montmartre cemetery.
"The Père Lachaise," he exclaimed, "possesses the tombs of Musset, Balzac, Chopin, La Fontaine, Bizet, of your 'friends' Cuvier and Thiers, and others, but it is too fashionable, too showy.... In Montmartre there is more intimacy: one seems to recall, to see the dear dead better. We have Mürger and Offenbach here, Renan and Gautier, Lannes--which means Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland--and Berlioz and Greuze, Madame, the exquisite Greuze who had a wretched wife, but how beautiful she was!... And they represent what is best in France, those men--heroism and wit, subtle art, deep thought and clear language, logic and method, inspiration and recklessness.... And that is typically French, Madame, or I am an old fool!"
M. H. had known intimately Victor Hugo and Berlioz, "the Victor Hugo of music." But whom had he not known, this artistic and lettered old man! He had met Madame Récamier, a year or two before her death. "She was ill, old, and wagged her head. The Vicomte de Chateaubriand--who had only a few weeks more to live--sat near her in an arm-chair, his knees wrapped in a huge rug. He talked to her about himself. That was ever his favourite topic of conversation. He was, at the same time, wearied of everything and almost of himself. Madame Récamier was still good to look upon and had a noble bearing. The oval of her face was pure and her shoulders had retained their beautiful curve. I was twenty then; she was seventy and nearly blind, and although she spoke very little, I could have loved to spend long hours in the company of this woman who had once held the sceptre of perfect loveliness."