The first eight months of her exile Madame Recamier passed at Chalons.  She had for companionship a little niece of her husband’s, whom she had previously adopted.  At the suggestion of Madame de Stael, she removed to Lyons, where Monsieur Recamier had many influential relatives.  Here she formed an intimacy with a companion in misfortune, the high-spirited Duchess of Chevreuse, whose proud refusal to enter into the service of the captive Spanish Queen was the cause of her exile.  “I can be a prisoner,” she replied, when the offer was made to her, “but I will never be a jailer.”

Though the society of friends offered Madame Recamier many diversions, she was often a prey to melancholy.  The Duchess D’Abrantes, who saw her here, casually mentions her dejection in her Memoirs, and Chateaubriand says that the separation from Madame de Stael weighed heavily upon her spirits.  He also alludes to a coolness between the friends, caused by Madame de Stael’s marriage with Monsieur de Rocca.  The desire to keep this connection secret induced Madame de Stael to write to her friend, declining a proposed visit from her, on the plea that she was about to leave Switzerland.  Chateaubriand asserts that Madame Recamier felt this slight severely, but Madame Lenormant makes no allusion to the circumstance.

At Lyons Madame Recamier met the author, Monsieur Ballanche.  He was presented to her by Camille Jordan, and, in the words of her biographer, “from that moment Monsieur Ballanche belonged to Madame Recamier.”  He was the least exacting of any of her friends.  All he asked was to devote his life to her, and to be allowed to worship her.  His friends called her his Beatrice.  As he was an extremely awkward and ugly man, the two might have been termed with equal propriety “Beauty and the Beast.”  Monsieur Ballanche’s face had been frightfully disfigured by an operation, and though his friends thought that his fine eyes and expression redeemed his appearance, he was, to strangers, particularly unprepossessing.  He was, moreover, very absent-minded.  When he joined Madame Recamier at Rome, she noticed, during an evening walk with him, that he had no hat.  In reply to her questions, he quietly said, “Oh, yes, he had left it at Alexandria.”  He had, in fact, forgotten it; and it never occurred to him to replace it by another.  Madame Lenormant relates an anecdote of his second interview with Madame Recamier, which is illustrative of his simplicity.

“He found her alone, working on embroidery.  The conversation at first languished, but soon became interesting,—­for, though Monsieur Ballanche had no chit-chat, he talked extremely well on subjects which interested him, such as philosophy, morals, politics, and literature.  Unfortunately, his shoes had an odor about them which was very disagreeable to Madame Recamier.  It finally made her faint, and, overcoming with difficulty the embarrassment she felt in speaking of so prosaic an annoyance, she