On Easter day in the following year Madame Récamier was persuaded to remove from the Abbaye-aux-Bois to the National Library, where her niece and nephew resided. The cholera had broken out in the neighborhood of the Abbaye; and though she did not fear death, she had a peculiar horror of that dreadful pestilence. But her flight was vain; the scourge pursued her, and fell with sadden violence on her enfeebled frame. The day before, Ampère and Madame Salvage had dined with her, and on the morning of her seizure her niece's daughter Juliette had been reading to her the memoirs of Madame de Motteville. During twelve hours she suffered extreme torture, but spoke with her confessor, and received the sacrament of extreme unction. Continual vomiting prevented the administration of the eucharist. Ampère, Paul David, the Abbé de Cazalès, her relations and servants, knelt around her bed to join in the prayers for the dying. Sobs and tears choked their voices, and "Adieu, adieu, we shall meet again; we shall see each other again," were the only words her agony allowed her to utter.
Madame Récamier breathed her last on the 11th of May, 1849. The terrible epidemic, which generally leaves hideous traces behind, spared her lifeless frame, and left it like a beautiful piece of sculptured marble. Achille Devéria took a drawing of her as she lay in her cold sleep, and his faithful sketch expresses at the same time suffering and repose.
Such was the end of her who, without the prestige of authorship, was regarded by her contemporaries as one of the most remarkable women of her time. We will not indulge in any exaggerated statement of her piety. Great numbers, no doubt, have attained to more interior perfection. Her ambition to please was undoubtedly a weakness. Religion did not make her what she was; yet she would never have been what she was without it. It was the ballast which steadied her when carrying crowded sail. It was the polar star that directed her course amid conflicting currents and adverse storms. It raised her standard of morality above that of many of her associates. It taught her how to be devout without dissimulation, a patroness of letters without pedantry, a patriot and a royalist without national disdain or political animosity. It made her charitable to the poor, kind to the aged and sorrowful, gracious and unassuming with all, at the very time that the proudest of emperors invited her presence at his court, and his brother Lucien made her the idol of his verse. Its golden thread guided her aright through the intricate mazes of social life--through a matrimonial position equally strange and unreal--an engagement to a royal prince who was the foe of France--through friendships with Bernadotte and Murat on their thrones, with the queens of Holland and of Naples when fallen, and with the third Napoleon when plotting to regain the sceptre of the first. It so lifted her above intrigue and cabals that she could give her right hand to the disaffected General Moreau and her left to the devoted Junot--could be made the confidante of all parties without betraying the secrets of any. It inclined her to be chary of giving advice, but to make it, when asked for, tell always on the side of virtue. It enabled her to exhort the sceptical with effect, and dispose the philosophic to accept the faith. [Footnote 19]