When the blow fell, Monsieur Recamier met it manfully.  He gave up everything to his creditors, who had so much confidence in his integrity that they put him at the head of the settlement of liquidation.  Madame Recamier was equally honorable.  She sold all her jewels.  They disposed of their plate, and offered the house in the Rue Mont Blanc for sale.  As a purchaser could not immediately be found, they removed to the ground-floor and let the other stories.  This reverse of fortune involved more than personal sacrifices.  Madame Recamier was both generous and charitable, and had dispensed her benefits with an open hand.  She had, with the aid of friends, founded a school for orphans, and had numerous claims upon her bounty.  To be restricted in her charities must have been a sore trial.  Further mortifications she was spared, for she was treated with greater deference than ever.  Her friends redoubled their attentions, her door was besieged by callers, who vied with each other in showing sympathy and respect.  Junot was one of her firmest friends at this crisis.  Witnessing, in Paris, the attentions she received, he spoke of them to the Emperor, when he rejoined him in Germany.  He was checked by Napoleon, who pettishly remarked that they could not have paid more homage to the widow of a marshal of France fallen on the field of battle.

Junot was not the only general of the Emperor who was concerned at her reverse of fortune.  Bernadotte, whom Sainte-Beuve numbers among her lovers, and whose letters confirm this idea, wrote to her from Germany, expressing his sympathy.  Madame de Stael was sensibly afflicted.  “Dear Juliette,” she writes, “we have enjoyed the luxury which surrounded you.  Your fortune has been ours, and I feel ruined because you are no longer rich.”

Another anxiety now weighed heavily upon Madame Recamier.  Her mother’s health had long been failing, and the misfortunes of her son-in-law were more than her shattered constitution could bear.  She died six months after the failure, leaving her fortune to her daughter, though her husband was still living.  To the last she was devoted to dress and society.  Throughout her illness she insisted upon being becomingly dressed every day, and supported to a couch, where she received her friends for several hours.

After Madame Bernard’s death, her daughter passed six months in retirement, but, her grief affecting her health, she was induced by Madame de Stael to visit her at Coppet.  Here she met the exiled Prince Augustus of Prussia, nephew of Frederick the Great.  We find in the “Seaforth Papers,” lately published in England, an allusion to this Prince, who visited London in the train of the allied sovereigns in 1814.  A lady writes, “All the ladies are desperately in love with him,—­his eyes are so fine, his moustaches so black, and his teeth so white.”  Madame Lenormant describes him as extremely handsome, brave, chivalric, and loyal.  He was twenty-four when he fell passionately in love with Madame de Stael’s beautiful guest, to whom he at once proposed a divorce and marriage.  We give Madame Lenormant’s account of his attachment.