Other admirers succeeded the Montmorencys.  The masked balls, fashionable under the Empire, were occasions for fresh conquests.  Madame Recamier attended them regularly under the protection of an elder brother of her husband, and had many piquant adventures.  Prince Metternich was devoted to her one season, and when Lent put an end to festivity, he visited her privately in the morning, that he might not incur the Emperor’s displeasure.  Napoleon’s animosity had now become marked and positive.  On one occasion, when three of his ministers met accidentally at her house, he heard of it, and asked petulantly how long since had the council been held at Madame Recamier’s?  He was especially jealous of foreign ministers, and treated with so much haughtiness any who frequented her salon, that, as a matter of prudence, they saw her only in society or visited her by stealth.  The Duke of Mecklenburg, whom she met at one of the masked balls, was extremely anxious to keep up her acquaintance.  She declined the honor, alleging the Emperor’s jealousy as reason for her refusal.  He persuaded her, however, to grant him an interview, and she appointed an evening when she did not generally receive visitors.  Stealing into the house in an undignified manner, the Duke was collared by the concierge, who mistook him for a thief.  This ill-fortune did not deter him, however, from visiting her frequently.  Years after, he wrote,—­“Among the precious souvenirs which I owe to you is one I particularly cherish.  It is the eminently noble and generous course you pursued toward me, when Napoleon had said openly, in the salon of the Empress Josephine, that he ’should regard as his personal enemy any foreigner who frequented the salon of Madame Recamier.’”

Madame Recamier was to feel yet more severely the effects of the Emperor’s displeasure.  In the autumn of 1806 the banking-house of Monsieur Recamier became embarrassed, through financial disorders in Spain.  Their difficulties would have been temporary, had the Bank of France granted them a loan on good security.  This favor was refused, and the house failed.  While the decision of the bank was yet uncertain, Monsieur Recamier confided to his wife the desperate state of his affairs, and deputed her to do, the next day, the honors of a large dinner-party, which could not be postponed, lest suspicion should be excited.  He went into the country, completely overwhelmed, and awaited there the result of his application.  Madame Recamier forced herself to appear as usual.  No one suspected the agony of her mind.  She afterwards said that she felt the whole evening as though she were a prey to some horrible nightmare.  In contrasting the conduct of the husband and wife, Madame Lenormant is scarcely just to the former.  Acutely as Madame Recamier dreaded the impending ruin, it could not be to her what it was to her husband.  A fearful responsibility rested upon him.  The failure of his house was not only disaster and possible dishonor, but the ruin of thousands who had confided in him.  A strong intellect might well be bowed down under the apprehension of such a catastrophe.  Women, too, are proverbially calmer in such emergencies than men.  To them it simply means sacrifice, but to men it is infinitely more than that.