[Footnote 13: Robertson's "Lectures," p. 291.]
Such was the statesman, apologist, philosopher, and poet who, in his forty-ninth year, obtained an ascendancy over Madame Récamier's imagination so complete that the religious Montmorency trembled, and the thoughtful Ballanche dreamed some ill. They thought, too, that her manners changed toward them, but she soon restored their confidence. It would be vain, indeed, to deny that her regard for Chateaubriand caused her many anxious thoughts and secret tears, particularly when, after a few years, he neglected her for the din of political debate and the society of beings less exalted and pure. But this estrangement was only temporary, and both before it and after it, till he died, her daily task was to soothe the irritability to which poets are said to be especially subject; to amuse him herself, as Madame de Maintenon amused Louis XIV.; and to surround him with those who, for her sake as well as for his, labored for the same charitable end.
Another reverse befel her in 1819. M. Récamier fouled again, and £4,000, which his wife had invested in his bank, went with the rest. Trusting in the security of his position, she had shortly before purchased a house in the Rue d'Anjou and furnished it handsomely. There was a garden belonging to it, and an alley of linden-trees, where Chateaubriand tells us he used to walk with Madame Récamier. But the house and garden were sold, and the occupant removed to a small apartment in the quaint old Abbaye-aux-Bois. She placed her husband and M. Bernard with M. Bernard's aged friend in the neighborhood, and dined with them, her niece, Ballanche, and Paul David every day. In the evening she received company, and her cell soon became the fashion, if not the rage. It was an incommodious room, with a brick floor, on the third story. The staircase was irregular; and Chateaubriand complains of being out of breath when he reached the top. A piano, a harp, books, a portrait of Madame de Staël, and a view of Coppet by moonlight, adorned it. Flower-pots stood in the windows; and in the green garden beneath nuns and boarders were seen walking to and fro. The top of an acacia rose to a level with the eye, tall spires stood out against the sky, and the hills of Sèvres bounded the distant horizon. The setting sun used to gild the picture and pierce through the open casements. Birds nestled in the Venetian blinds, and the hum of the great city scarce broke the silence.