of her beauty, and yet, with an amusing inconsistency, she adds that Madame Recamier always dressed in white and wore pearls in preference to other jewels, that the dazzling whiteness of her skin might eclipse their softness and purity.  It was, in fact, impossible to be unconscious of a beauty so ravishing that it intoxicated all beholders.  At the theatre, at the promenade, at public assemblies, she was followed by admiring throngs.

“She was sensible,” writes one who knew her well, “of every look, every word of admiration,—­the exclamation of a child or a woman of the people, equally with the declaration of a prince.  In crowds from the side of her elegant carriage, which advanced slowly, she thanked each for his admiration by a motion of the head and a smile.”

As an instance of the effect she produced, Madame Lenormant gives the testimony of a contemporary, Madame Regnauld de Saint-Jean d’Angely, who, talking over her own beauty and that of other women of her youth, named Madame Recamier.  “Others,” she said, “were more truly beautiful, but none produced so much effect.  I was in a drawing-room where I charmed and captivated all eyes.  Madame Recamier entered.  The brilliancy of her eyes, which were not, however, very large, the inconceivable whiteness of her shoulders, crushed and eclipsed everybody.  She was resplendent.  At the end of a moment, however, the true amateurs returned to me.”

It was not her own countrymen alone who raved about her beauty.  The sober-minded English people were quite as much impressed.  When she visited England during the short peace of Amiens, she created intense excitement.  The journals recorded her movements, and on one occasion in Kensington Gardens the crowd was so great that she narrowly escaped being crushed.  At the Opera she was obliged to steal away early to avoid a similar annoyance, and then barely succeeded in reaching her carriage.  Chateaubriand tells us that her portrait, engraved by Bartolozzi, and spread throughout England, was carried thence to the isles of Greece.  Ballanche, remarking on this circumstance, said that it was “beauty returning to the land of its birth.”

Years after, when the allied sovereigns were in Paris, and Madame Recamier thirty-eight years old, the effect of her beauty was just as striking.  Madame de Kruedener, celebrated for her mysticism and the power she exerted over the Emperor Alexander, then held nightly reunions, beginning with prayer and ending in a more worldly fashion.  Madame Recamier’s entrance always caused distraction, and Madame de Kruedener commissioned Benjamin Constant to write and beseech her to be less charming.  As this piquant note will lose its flavor by translation, we give it in the original.

“Je m’acquitte avec un peu d’embarras d’une commission que Mme. de Kruedener vient de me donner.  Elle vous supplie de venir la moins belle que vous pourrez.  Elle dit que vous eblouissez tout le monde, et que par la toutes les ames sont troublees, et toutes les attentions impossibles.  Vous ne pouvez pas deposer votre charme, mais ne le rehaussez pas.”